


Daddies

by Lady Divine (fhartz91)



Category: Glee
Genre: Adopted Children, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Future, Daddy!Sebastian, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family, Family Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Humor, Future Fic, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Romance, daddy!kurt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-02
Updated: 2018-01-01
Packaged: 2018-02-07 05:06:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 35
Words: 43,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1886181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fhartz91/pseuds/Lady%20Divine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a series of one-shots that I wrote that surround Kurt and Sebastian, and their adopted son Thomas. Each chapter is rated differently, though they mostly fall in the "appropriate for teen audiences" category.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Daddies

At some point between dreaming about his mother’s rice pudding and dressing in a red Spandex super hero costume, Sebastian felt the soft press of lips against his. Regretfully, however, the lure of sleep won out over the promise of his husband’s tempting lips, and Sebastian drifted back into a world of crime fighting and custard-based desserts.

Sebastian turned onto his stomach and reach out an arm for Kurt, searching out his warmth and his incredibly soft skin even while his head still swam with the sweet delirium of sleep. Sebastian’s hand padded at the mattress, coming in contact with cold, wrinkled sheets at every pass. Sebastian sighed. He peeled one heavy eyelid opened and took a peek.

Gone. Kurt’s side of the bed was vacant. The sheets were cold. Sebastian frowned. He knew exactly where his husband had gone.

Kurt had crawled off to climb into bed with a sassier, much younger brunette.

Sebastian threw off his comforter with a resentful grunt, shivering as all the delicious heat escaped like a flash into the chill evening air. He grabbed blindly for his sweatshirt, tossing it on over his tank top t-shirt, trying to wake up even as his body gravitated instinctually back towards the bed.

“Kurt…” he groaned, his voice low and groggy. He stumbled into the hall, stubbing his toe on the door jamb along the way.

Sebastian felt his way down the hall, the journey to the small bedroom on the left not yet ingrained in his psyche so that he can make it unfailingly in the dark.

“Kurt…” he continued to groan, like some sleep deprived, one-track minded zombie.

“Shhh!” a high-pitched voice hissed from inside the otherwise quiet room.

“Did…did you just shush me?” Sebastian mumbled incredulously. Now more awake, he made his way quietly through the partially open door. He found Kurt where he always found him, cramped onto the far edge of the full-size bed, his entire body curled around a peacefully sleeping toddler. Sebastian could see a tuft of the boy’s brown hair, barely visible above the Skylanders comforter wrapped tightly around him.

Sebastian put a hand on Kurt’s shoulder, smirking down at the unlikely pair.

“I thought we agreed that climbing into bed with snuggles here every time he had a nightmare was a bad idea,” Sebastian chided around a yawn.

“I never said that,” Kurt muttered, refusing to look up into Sebastian’s mocking face.

“Uh, yes you did,” Sebastian said, moving to the unused side of the bed. “You said he needed to learn how to comfort himself. You showed me magazine articles, and quoted from books written by Star Trek characters…”

Kurt scoffed. He wrapped his arms protectively around the little boy.

Sebastian lied down carefully on the bed and stretched out, his feet hanging over the edge.

“Let me guess,” Sebastian sighed, “another dream about his mom?”

Kurt didn’t have to answer. They’d only had Thomas for about a month, and even though the little boy with the infectious laugh and the mischievous streak had opened up amazingly to Kurt and Sebastian, he dreamt every night about his mother.

The boy’s snarky attitude had appealed to Sebastian. Thomas reminded him of a miniature Kurt.

The way he had lost his mother had drawn Kurt to him. In the end, more than anything, that was why they had chosen him as their first foster child.

Though ‘foster’ was just a formality. Sebastian knew that once they got the okay, Thomas would be theirs.

“At least you could have let me get up with him this time.” Sebastian grabbed for the end of the comforter and pulled it over his body, the unused end barely fitting over him with nothing left to cover his back.

“You were deeply engrossed in another rice pudding dream,” Kurt whispered. “I know better than to interrupt one of those.”

“Mmm,” Sebastian moaned, smacking his lips. “Rice pudding.”

Sebastian lay still, trying hard to convince himself that he was comfortable enough to fall asleep, but after a few minutes with his ass hanging off the bed and his back exposed to the cold he realized he was in for a long night.

“Um…can’t we just take the little guy into our bed for the night, since we’re all together anyway?”

“No,” Kurt insisted, rolling his own stiff neck and shoulders. “Then he’ll just climb into bed with us whenever he has a nightmare, and that I _can’t_ allow.”

“We do need to get a lock for our door,” Sebastian said, trying to scoot closer to the cuddled pair. “What if he walks in on us…”

Sebastian stopped and chuckled.

“What?” Kurt asked, holding Thomas closer when he rolled over and buried his head beneath his pillow to block out their conversation.

“I just don’t make enough money to pay for that amount of therapy.”


	2. A Trip to the Doctor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kurt and Sebastian take Thomas to his pediatrician Wes (I made his last name Leung because I couldn't find Wes's last name), and Sebastian has it out with the receptionist.

“Hummel…Smythe…” Sebastian growled through a jaw clenched so tight he could barely breathe. “Thomas…Hummel…Smythe…”

“I know, sir,” the severe receptionist returned, completely unmoved by Sebastian’s mounting anger. “But your son is _still_ not on the list of appointments for today.”

“That’s probably because my husband just talked to Wes not five minutes ago,” Sebastian said, his fingers curling and uncurling in tight fists on the counter.

“Do you mean _Dr. Leung_?” the nurse returned condescendingly. Sebastian rolled his eyes.

“To you maybe. You didn’t sleep next to him for two years in high school.”

The nurse appeared slightly offended at that comment, which Sebastian chalked up as a win.

“Look,” the nurse said, handing Sebastian a clipboard, “you are more than welcome to fill out this admissions paperwork and wait with all of the other walk-ins. F.Y.I. it’s about a two hour wait.” Sebastian was sure he saw the evil woman grimace, but he knew that Kurt would withhold sex for at least a week if he dropped this woman like a hot potato here on the floor. Sebastian grabbed the clipboard with as much venom as he could put into picking something up, and reached for the sparkly little recycled soup can filled with flower pens, but when Nurse Ratched saw him reach for one, she grabbed it away. He looked at her with his jaw dropped.

“What the fuck?” he groaned.

“Those aren’t for the patients,” she said coolly, replacing it with a plain white mug filled with blue BIC ballpoint pens.

“But the other receptionist let us use the flower pens,” Sebastian groused loudly.

“Yes, well, the other receptionist isn’t here.”

“Yeah…and the other receptionist isn’t a bitch!” Sebastian spat out.

The woman stood up and slammed her hands on the desk.

“I will not be spoken to that way,” she said, jutting her chin and her tiny, upturned nose into the air.

“Yeah, well, you should have probably thought about that before you left your house and said ‘You know what? I think I’m going to be a bitch to some poor sick little kid’s parents today!’”

From the chorus of snickers that arose in the waiting room around him, Sebastian suspected he wasn’t the only one.

Kurt sighed, having snuck in with Thomas sometime after the pen argument and met Wes at the inside office door.

“Kurt,” Wes said, smiling warmly. “It’s so nice to see you. How is Thomas feeling?”

“His throat hurts,” Kurt said, keeping a hand around the shy little boy hiding behind his legs. “And I think he has an ear infection.”

“I see,” Wes said, looking at Thomas thoughtfully, then pulling a sudden, maniacal face that made the wary boy giggle. Wes shook his head at the ruckus coming from the front desk.

“Sebastian?” Wes called out over the bickering.

Sebastian stopped mid-insult and his head snapped in Wes’s direction. His red, twisted face relaxed into a smooth and charming grin.

“Wes, dude! Thank God you’re here.”

“Is everything alright?” Wes asked.

Before the nurse could put in her two-cents, Sebastian pointed at her accusingly.

“I don’t like her,” he said petulantly. “She’s being mean to me.”

Wes looked from Sebastian to the smug nurse rolling her eyes. Wes raised an eyebrow in her direction and the woman actually froze.

“Noted,” Wes said. Kurt had to bite his lip and turn his face away to muffle his laughter at the look of dread on the woman’s face. “Anything else?”

“Yes.” Sebastian stood to his full height, straightening his wrinkled shirt. “She won’t let me use the flower pens.”

Wes looked back at the now cowering woman, and made a subtle gesture with his head. She moved quickly but stiffly, returning the sparkly pen can back up to its place on the counter. Sebastian rubbed his hands together and plucked one of the pens, a purple gerbera, out of the can. He carried it with the clipboard and joined his family at the office door, throwing one last superior look over his shoulder as he went.

Wes simply shook his head as he led the way.

“Was that really necessary?” Kurt asked.

“Yes,” Sebastian said as he held the door open wide for his husband and son, “yes, it was.”


	3. The Lego Conundrum

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rated NC17 for language and mention of sex.

“This is your fault, you know,” Kurt gripes as he slowly makes his way across the living room carpet, plucking stray Legos from the pile and separating the blocks into different containers.

“For getting carpet instead of keeping the hardwood floors?” Sebastian smirks, watching his husband’s painfully sluggish progress, shaking his head every time Kurt hisses when he finds a particularly sharp block with the heel of his hand instead of his eyes.

“That,” Kurt agrees, “and for buying Thomas every single Lego known to man.”

“The boy needs to be able to build whatever he wants to build,” Sebastian argues.

Kurt kneels up straight and leans from side to side, pivoting at the waist to crack his tired back.

“Yeah, but he has enough Legos to build a full-scale model of Grand Central Station.”

“Well, no one says you have to separate them by size and color, Captain OCD,” Sebastian quips. “If you’d just grab them and toss them all together, you’d have been done an hour ago and we’d be fucking by now.”

Kurt blows out a breath in frustration, tossing his hands in the air.

“You could be down here helping, you know, instead of standing around making smart remarks.”

“I could,” Sebastian says, his smirk curling devilishly, “but the view of your ass is so much better from up here. Besides, I’ve got that old war injury.”

Kurt looks up at Sebastian with disgust.

“What war injury, you faker?” Kurt snaps.

“The one I got from fighting with you for all those years when you should have just given up like a good boy and agreed to be my boyfriend.”

Kurt crosses his arms.

“Well, I married you, you asshat, so it looks like you won and I lost. So get down here and help me.”

Sebastian tilts his head and sighs.

“You’re right,” he admits. “I should. But I think I’ll get a beer instead.”

Kurt scoffs as Sebastian winks at him and makes his way across the carpet towards the kitchen. Kurt shakes his head and bends low over the floor, gritting his teeth and getting back to the arduous job of hunting down Legos.

“God damned motherfucking shit!” Sebastian barks out suddenly. Kurt snaps his head up and sees his husband hopping around on one foot, the other foot raised and leaning against his knee. From his place on the floor Kurt can see two small red blocks lodged in the soft skin of Sebastian’s arch.

Kurt smiles.

Maybe there’s a God up there somewhere looking out for him after all.


	4. Thomas and the Bunny Pajamas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Happy Easter from the Hummel-Smythe family :)

“PapaDaddyPapaDaddyPapaDaddyPapaDaddyPapaDaddy…”

The chant continues, getting faster and louder the longer Kurt and Sebastian pretend to sleep, but faking out a four-year-old on a major candy related holiday championed by a fluffy animal mascot is nearly impossible, especially since children at that age can sense three things in adults: lies, fear, and consciousness, even in its tiniest measure.

Violent shaking by tiny but surprisingly strong hands accompanies the chanting, and Sebastian shakes his head.

“He’s not leaving, is he?” Sebastian grumbles, wrapping his arms around Kurt and hugging him tighter, burying his head deeper into the crook of his husband’s neck.

“I’m afraid not,” Kurt mumbles back, pulling the comforter over their heads, just to have it yanked forcibly back down.

“Papa! Daddy!” a hyper voice whines. “He’s been here! You have to get up!”

Kurt sighs.

“You know we’re going to have to get out of bed,” Kurt mutters, defeated by his own wisdom.

“But we just went to sleep ten minutes ago,” Sebastian complains.

“I know, I know…” Kurt says, patting Sebastian’s hand, trying to comfort the man currently burrowing into his back. Kurt peeks through a heavy eyelid at the enthusiastic little boy bouncing on their bed like it’s a trampoline and snickers.

“Sebastian,” Kurt laughs. “Sebastian, take a look at your son.”

Sebastian groans even louder, prying a single eyelid open to catch sight of his son, hopped up on sugar and racing around their room. He focuses harder on the tiny blur as he drags around an oversized basket, shedding plastic grass all over the carpet.

“Thomas!” Sebastian says more sternly. “Did you break into the jellybeans?” Sebastian rubs his tired eyes with the heel of his hand to clear his vision. “We said no sugar till…”

After a few more blinks Sebastian can finally make out the sassy elfish child dancing in circles dressed in the most God-awful Pepto Bismol pink Easter Bunny pajamas Sebastian has ever seen.

“Holy shit!” Sebastian says, yawning and laughing at the exact same time. “He put them on! He actually put them on!”

Kurt elbows Sebastian hard in the ribs.

“Don’t curse when he’s around,” Kurt scolds.

“I don’t care,” Sebastian says, pointing at the boy in the bunny suit sitting on the carpet in the corner of the room. “Look at him.”

Kurt sits up to fully appreciate his adorable adopted son. Thomas’s basket sits between his legs, gigantic bunny slippers on his feet, as he breaks into another small plastic egg full of jellybeans. One lop-sided ear droops into the boy’s face, but he simply pushes it aside, intent on popping the colored candy into his mouth.

Kurt reaches over to the table beside their bed and grabs his iPhone.

“What are you doing, babe?” Sebastian asks. Kurt opens the camera app and aims at Thomas, snapping a few pictures.

“I’m letting Carole and dad see the terror they have wrought by sending us that outfit,” Kurt explains, typing out a quick message to go along with the pictures and hitting send. Kurt sees Thomas reach for yet another plastic egg full of jellybeans and his eyes go wide, taking in the already empty eggs broken in half and littering the bottom of the basket.

“Okay, Thomas,” Kurt relents, eager to get something else in his boy’s stomach other than high fructose corn syrup and red dye #5. “Go into the living room. We’ll have pancakes and eggs, and I’ll get the map for the Easter egg hunt.”

“Yay!” the boy cheers, grabbing up his basket and racing into the next room.

“A fucking map?” Sebastian moans in disbelief. “Are you kidding me?”

“How else do you expect us to find fifty hard-boiled eggs?” Kurt asks. “Trust me when I tell you that you don’t want to miss one and find it in July.”

Kurt throws off the comforter the rest of the way, shimmying out of the bed, but Sebastian pulls him back, laying him flat on the bed and crawling over him with a familiar telltale glint in his darkening green eyes.

“Oh, no,” Kurt giggles, placing a hand flat on Sebastian’s chest to push him away. “Not morning sex. Not today.”

“It’ll only take a minute,” Sebastian promises. “And as usual, you don’t have to do anything by lie back and let me do all the work.”

Kurt slugs Sebastian in the shoulder with a grimace on his face that’s fighting so hard to morph into a grin.

“Well, then later can I dress you up? I think you would make the hottest little bunny,” Sebastian purrs into his husband’s ear.

“Uh, I’m not sure I would actually fit into that costume,” Kurt chuckles, turning his head and watching Thomas hop by the bedroom door, the ears on top of his head bobbing with each jump.

“I don’t need you in the whole costume,” Sebastian clarifies, nibbling on Kurt’s earlobe. “Just the ears and the tail.”


	5. Newest Member of the Family

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Hummel-Smythe family considers getting a puppy. (Warning for minor blink-and-you'll-miss-it mention of an anxiety disorder in a child.)

“ _Ugh_ …Daddy?” Thomas grunts under the weight of an amazingly patient Labradoodle puppy, slipping in the boy’s arms as he half-carries/half-drags the dog from the car to the house. “Isn’t Papa… _uh-oh_ …going to be mad… _oops_ …when he finds out we went out and got a puppy… _mmfh_ …even after he said no?”

“He didn’t say no,” Sebastian reminds the boy, patting him reassuringly on the shoulder, staying close enough by his son to rescue the poor animal if needed. “He said he’d think about it.”

“Yeah, well… _oof_ …when Papa says he’s going to think about something, that’s usually another way of saying no.”

Thomas sets the fluffy beige dog on the floor and plops down beside it.

“Don’t you worry about your Papa, Tom-Tom,” Sebastian smirks, trying to keep the tone of his voice as G-rated as possible, “I’ll take care of him.”

Sebastian and Thomas hear the doorknob jiggle, and Sebastian leaps into action.

“Now, remember the plan, buddy?” Sebastian asks the concerned little boy who sits close and protective of his new best friend.

“Yup,” Thomas says with a nod, taking the black Wii remote that his father hands him.

“Good,” Sebastian says, dropping onto the floor beside the Labradoodle and its anxious new owner. Sebastian turns on the flat screen and starts the game.

***

Kurt rummages through the mail, muttering to himself as he walks up the steps to the house.

“Bill, bill, junk…Ooo! Burberry catalogue…”

He reaches for the doorknob and gives it a turn, confused when he pushes on the door and it doesn’t open.

“Guys?” Kurt calls, knocking on the door. “Bas? Thomas?”

Kurt listens at the door as he calls out the names of his husband and son. He can hear the muted sounds of Mario Kart through the door but nothing else. He sighs, fishing in his pocket for his house keys.

“Guys,” Kurt calls in when he unlocks the door, “I told you I was just running to the post office. Why did you lock the door? Did you go out or something?”

“Yeah, babe,” Sebastian mumbles, completely involved in shooting a koopa shell at a passing Princess Daisy kart. “We ran out for minute. Sorry, I forgot to leave the door unlocked.”

Kurt stands and stares suspiciously at his distracted husband in silence. He eyes Sebastian and Thomas, both almost too focused on the game they’re playing. Sebastian’s eyes dart up to Kurt’s face quickly and he smirks, blowing him a kiss before returning to the game.

Kurt walks past, blocking the view of the t.v. for a moment. Father and son don’t yell at him as usual. Instead they crane their necks to peek around him. Something’s not quite right and Kurt knows it. He looks at them one last time and sighs, continuing on into the kitchen. Kurt shrugs. Maybe he’s mistaken, except…

Kurt walks back into the living room and takes another look at the pair playing Mario Kart with surgical concentration. His jaw drops and he puts his hands on his hips.

“Sebastian Smythe!” Kurt bellows. “Did you go out behind my back and get Thomas a dog after I said no?”

Thomas drops his remote and throws his arms around the quiet puppy’s neck, and Kurt feels his chest tighten.

“You never said no,” Sebastian points out, moving closer to his son and the puppy. “You said you’d think about it.”

“Bas!” Kurt groans. “We _did_ talk about it!”

Sebastian waits for a moment, and when no one speaks he nudges Thomas on the shoulder inconspicuously.

Thomas turns to stare at his father, bewildered, but then Sebastian raises his eyebrows and Thomas remembers ‘the plan’.

“Oh,” he says quietly. Kurt bites his lip to cage the chuckle bubbling up in his throat. “You and daddy talked about it,” Thomas recites stiffly, “but we didn’t discuss it as a fambly.”

“Family,” Sebastian corrects softly.

“Right,” Thomas says, “ _fam-i-ly_.”

Kurt gasps, trying to prepare a defense against an adorable five-year-old.

He pretty much accepts that he’s already lost.

“Tell him, Tom-Tom,” Sebastian encourages when he sees the clouded look in his husband’s eyes that signals his impending defeat.

“Papa,” Thomas starts, pulling himself straighter with his arms still looped around the puppy’s neck, “you said this house is a dem….demo…dem…”

“Democracy,” Sebastian whispers out of the corner of his mouth.

“Medocracy!” Thomas crows triumphantly.

“Close enough, kiddo,” Sebastian whispers again.

“And that means we all vote for the things we want and the most of us wins.”

Kurt sighs again, putting a hand to his forehead, head pounding with the strain of trying so hard not to laugh.

Thomas watches Kurt squeeze his eyes shut and shake his head. He turns his tiny head to stare at Sebastian, eyes wide with despair, pleading for help.

Sebastian ruffles the boy’s hair and gives him a reassuring wink as he stands and heads for his husband.

“Kurt,” Sebastian says, grabbing hold of his upper arms and pulling him out of earshot.

“Bas, we talked about this,” Kurt says, “about the shedding…”

“But it’s a Labradoodle,” Sebastian intervenes. “They don’t shed. They’re hypoallergenic. Remember what Wes said about maybe getting Thomas a comfort animal? To help with his anxiety?”

“Bas…” Kurt looks up into Sebastian’s green eyes and groans, “there’s no such thing as a hypoallergenic dog. And besides, there’s the walking and the chewing and the messes.”

“Kurt…” Sebastian puts a hand to Kurt’s cheek, and despite his irritation at his husband’s actions he leans into the touch, “I’m not a complete idiot, you know. Wes put me in touch with an occupational therapist who specializes in animal therapy and gave me the number of a place that trains animals for boys like Thomas.”

Kurt looks at Sebastian with surprise; seeing the snarky, over-confident, devil-may-care man he fell in love with through new eyes.

“You really did all of that?” Kurt asks.

Sebastian smiles, leaning in close and pressing his lips gently to Kurt’s, kissing him tenderly.

It may not be overwhelmingly hot or all too passionate, but it’s enough to take Kurt’s breath away.

“When he needs to go out in the middle of the night, you’re taking him,” Kurt says against his husband’s tempting lips.”

“He’s crate trained,” Sebastian counters, “so already handled.”

“And if he chews on anything of mine, you’re replacing it…with interest.”

“Agreed, but I’m sure that will never happen,” Sebastian grins. “Anything else?”

Kurt’s exasperated look transforms into a wicked grin. He leans in to Sebastian’s ear.

“And you’re going to blow me,” Kurt whispers, “every night, every morning, and any time in between that I ask you to.”

“And how is that different from any other day that ends in ‘y’ for the past how many years?” Sebastian drawls, nibbling Kurt’s ear and tugging slightly.

Kurt giggles and turns back to Thomas, but the sound drifts away when he sees the boy’s head buried in the puppy’s neck, his chest shaking with silent sobs.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Kurt coos, breaking away from his husband and kneeling down beside the little boy. Kurt puts an arm around his shoulder and nuzzles his nose into his son’s strawberry-scented hair. “Why don’t we take our newest family member down to PetCo and get him some toys? Maybe a collar?”

Thomas’s watery eyes rose slowly to look at Kurt.

“You mean,” Thomas says, his voice wobbly, “you mean Hepburn can stay?”

Kurt turns his head to look back at his husband, meeting the green eyes watching them with a smug smile on his handsome yet still meerkatish face.

“Hepburn?” Kurt says with a raised eyebrow. “You guys didn’t pull any punches, did you?”

Kurt stands, helping Thomas to his feet. He offers the boy his hand and leads him to the front door, followed close behind by the obedient puppy.

“What can I say?” Sebastian asks, pinching Kurt’s ass as he passes in front of him. “I know all of your weak spots.”


	6. An Itchy Situation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by a FF reviewer's request for Kurt taking care of Seb while he's sick, something other than a headache or a cold. I had a lot of ideas, but this is the first one I got the chance to write. From the 'Daddies' verse which includes Kurt and Seb's adopted son Thomas and his Labradoodle Hepburn. Warning for mentions of bondage, oral sex, and a little frustration. :)

Kurt stands at the end of the California king-sized bed, hands resting on his hips as he eyes his sexy husband, raking down his body with smiling blue eyes, licking dry lips as they fall past his bare chest and linger on the white cotton sheet that covers his hips down to his legs, knowing without seeing that all he’s wearing underneath is a pair of deep purple briefs. Kurt’s gaze returns to Sebastian’s face, biting his lower lip to stifle a giggle at the bright pink paste caked all over his tan skin.

“Tell me again,” Kurt whimpers when the urge to laugh becomes too irresistible, “how you are covered in head to toe poison ivy?”

Sebastian sighs, wiggling his nose when it itches to keep from scratching, staring forlornly at the paisley print oven mitts on his hands, duct taped around the wrists to keep him from ripping them off and scratching himself within an inch of his life.

“Kurt,” Sebastian groans, rolling his dry, irritated eyes to the ceiling, “I’ve told you this story three times already.”

“I know,” Kurt says, “but the part I can’t seem to wrap my mind around is how a grown man comes home covered in poison ivy when his five-year-old son and their puppy don’t seem to have a single rash.”

Kurt turns his head to look back at the little boy, whose arms are wrapped around his beige dog’s neck, staring up at his fathers anxiously. Kurt examines them both with shrewd eyes to make sure that his original assessment was correct.

“Nope,” Kurt says, turning back to his husband with a wicked grin. “Not a rash to be seen on those two.”

“Well,” Sebastian starts, eying his amused husband with agitation, “I…”

“Thomas,” Kurt interrupts, calling over his shoulder, “would you like to tell your daddy why it is that you’re not covered in head to toe poison ivy like he is?”

“B-because,” Thomas stutters, not sure if he should be answering and getting his daddy into trouble, “Hepburn sensed the danger and kept me away?”

“That’s right,” Kurt coos, his voice thick with condescension, “that means that you, Sebastian Smythe, have less common sense than a dog.”

“To be fair, Labradoodles are very intelligent,” Sebastian retorts with a smirk.

“Okay, well,” Kurt claps his hands together and smiles, “there’s nothing much more I can do for you, babe. You have your calamine lotion opened and ready to be applied, you have a Big Gulp of Coca-Cola, and…” Kurt grabs the remote for the t.v. off the bedside table and puts it on the sheet beside Sebastian’s left oven mitt, “…now you can watch your programs.”

Kurt winks at him, smiling sunnily, and Sebastian mocks him, grimacing when the calamine lotion cracks again right below his eyes. He purses his lips and blows a stream of air up to try and dislodge a flake from his eyelid. He finally gives in and brushes it away with the rounded dome of the ridiculously oversized oven mitt.

“I’m taking Thomas out for some ice-cream, as a reward for not rolling down a hill into a patch of poison ivy just to retrieve a tennis ball.”

“Yeah!” Thomas crows. All semblance of anxiety bleeding away with the promise of a fudge-dipped soft serve cone, the boy runs off with Hepburn on his heels to put on his sneakers. Kurt’s eyes follow him out the door; then his gaze turns back to Sebastian, lying helpless on the bed, glaring up at Kurt with burning, vengeful eyes.

“Do you know what this reminds me of?” Kurt purrs, approaching the bed, sliding up slowly, trailing light fingers over the sheet, fingertips barely brushing Sebastian’s skin.

“What?” Sebastian snaps, but not as sharply as he intends, his eyes focused on where Kurt’s fingers linger above the sheet, dancing in little circles to and fro without touching his body.

“Do you remember in that blessed time before we had a little boy and a dog, when we could fuck in the living room in the middle of the day…” Kurt leans over, letting his lips travel an inch above Sebastian’s chest, his breath tickling his skin, making the hairs on his arms stand on end (or try to since they are pretty effectively plastered down with calamine lotion). “I used to tie you to the bed…” Kurt whispers in a husky, hungry voice, watching the bulge beneath the white sheet grow as he speaks in soft tones against Sebastian’s cheek. “I sucked you off till you couldn’t see straight…” He lets a single finger tease the head of Sebastian’s interested cock through the sheet. “I licked you and teased you, kept you on the edge of cumming all night long…and you used to call me…master?”

Sebastian moans into Kurt’s mouth where it hovers, lips parted, within a breath of his own.

“Yes…” Sebastian sighs, waiting for Kurt to kiss him, to touch him, to put him out of his misery. It would only take a minute. Thomas can definitely wait.

“Good to know,” Kurt says, grinning wide, pulling away slowly, feeling Sebastian’s hard cock throb once beneath his fingers as he steps back to view his handiwork - his cocky husband, hard and panting, completely helpless to do anything to relieve the pressure.

“I’ll just let you think about that while we’re out.” Kurt takes a step backward toward the door.

Sebastian suddenly realizes that Kurt is leaving, and his lust-blown eyes widen with panic.

“Wait…wait, Kurt…” Sebastian looks down his body at his now rock-hard cock straining against his briefs. He pulls off the sheet and fumbles with the elastic waistband of his underwear, trying to sneak a large, quilt-covered hand underneath. Kurt chuckles as he disappears out the door. “Kurt?” Sebastian calls out. “Kurt?...Kurt!”

“Don’t worry,” Kurt yells from the front door. “I’ll bring you home something to cool you off.”


	7. Swear Jar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here is another chapter in my 'Daddies' series. Because of Sebastian's swearing and its effect on their adopted son, Thomas, Kurt is forced to take drastic measures. Warnings for swearing, symptoms of anxiety in a child, and insinuations of sex.

“Stupid, Goddamned, son-of-a…” Sebastian grumbles, tapping his forehead with his fingers, not even trying to calm down.

_Plink, plink, plink._

“Sebastian…” Kurt warns, taking over as the voice of calm.

“Why do I even try?” Sebastian mutters on, ignoring Kurt, pacing back and forth on the kitchen linoleum in a tight circle. “No matter what I say, he still makes stupid fucking decisions…”

_Plink._

“Sebastian!”

“I’m sorry, Kurt!” Sebastian apologizes, not stopping his stride, with Thomas hot on his heels. He hoists a Mason jar in the air, preparing for his father’s next curse word. “But this is the last and final fuc—frickin’ straw!”

Sebastian thought he had caught himself in time, but a tiny shake of the head from Kurt proves him wrong. Sebastian digs into his pocket, pulls out a shiny coin, and drops it into the Mason jar, transforming a new string of curses into something a little more creative so as not to go completely broke.

Cursing had never been a problem in the Hummel-Smythe household until recently, when Sebastian teamed up with some of his old Dalton buddies to start flipping investment properties. It was a hobby for fun and profit…that was the pitch Sebastian had used to get Kurt to agree. Everybody in the group brought something to the table – Wes has a particular expertise in finding just the right properties (an interesting skill for a pediatrician, but nevertheless…), David is a contractor with his own company, Thad’s brother is a painter with an amazing eye for custom colors (and with two new mouths to feed, always grateful for the work), and Trent is a crack real estate agent. Using Kurt’s exquisite designer’s eye, they have managed to make quite a bit of money already.

The only revolving door in their ‘flip crew’ is their electrician. Every one David hires ends up abandoning the project halfway through. It’s the bizarre Bermuda Triangle in their venture, and the source of Sebastian’s more colorful vocabulary as of late. Of course, Sebastian’s normal vernacular was never exactly G-rated. Kurt is lucky if he can keep Sebastian anywhere below NC-17, but usually Sebastian is pretty good about not dropping the F-bomb in front of Thomas.

They were in the middle of completing their fifteenth house, and another electrician had gone AWOL when it seemed like suddenly all the rules were washed right down the drain. It didn’t bother Kurt too much; he would simply usher Thomas out of the room until Sebastian’s fit was finished.

Then Kurt got a call from Thomas’s school. Thomas had messed up an art project – a macaroni portrait of Abraham Lincoln – and he had a mini F-bomb of his own. From that afternoon on, Kurt decided drastic measures had to be taken.

Hence, the swear jar. For every swear word that slipped, the guilty family member had to pony up a coin. Thomas’s fine was a nickel from his own allowance. Kurt’s was a dime. Since Sebastian seemed to be the worst offender, his fine was a quarter.

Of course, contentions had been made for specific circumstances, because there were times when cursing just couldn’t be avoided. It had been agreed that if a metal safe dropped on someone’s foot that they would be allowed to curse while they dealt with the pain. Sebastian mentioned to Kurt , in private, that Kurt tends to have quite a foul mouth on him during sex, but Kurt said that fell under the umbrella of contentions as unavoidable, and since it doesn’t happen in front of Thomas, it doesn’t count toward the total.

At the end of each week, the money in the jar is sorted and counted. If Thomas has contributed the most coins, he has to do extra chores or has a privilege taken away. If it’s Kurt, he has to make Thomas’s favorite peanut butter cup cheesecake. If Sebastian curses the most, he has to take the family out for pizza and ice-cream.

By the weight of Thomas’s little jar, evident by the strain in his shaking arms as he hefts the jar up onto his chest, Sebastian is going to be taking the lot of them out for pizza and ice-cream for sure.

“Sebastian,” Kurt says, trying to sound reasonable, “try and calm down, and we can discuss this.”

“I’m fucking through discussing this, Kurt!” Sebastian growls.

 _Plink_.

“Sebastian…” Kurt goes for stern this time, “I don’t like you using that language in front of Thomas. We talked about this.”

“What?” Sebastian looks at Kurt, thoroughly confused. “I’m following the rules. I’m paying the fucking jar, aren’t I, Tom-Tom?”

 _Plink_.

“Yes,” Thomas says with a grin, repositioning the jar so it doesn’t fall, skittering behind his father to keep up.

“No,” Kurt argues, “you’re abusing the jar. The jar is supposed to teach Thomas not to curse, not to introduce him to the concept of loopholes.”

“What loophole?” Sebastian grimaces at Kurt, making air-quotes with his fingers to emphasize his point.

“The loophole that you can say whatever the hell you want as long as you pay the jar!”

Thomas turns to Kurt and frowns.

Kurt rolls his eyes and digs a dime out of his pocket.

 _Plink_.

“Well, I need to vent, so this is me VENTING!” Sebastian says through gritted teeth, so close to exploding that Kurt can feel the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. Even Thomas’s smile slips, and Hepburn, his Labradoodle puppy, winds between the little boy’s legs to keep him from getting too upset. “And when I VENT, I SWEAR!”

Kurt stands from his stool and approaches his husband, pushing Thomas behind his body gently with a hand to the boy’s shoulder.

“Sebastian…” Kurt’s voice is soft, lulling, “I don’t think you understand…”

“You don’t understand, Kurt!” Sebastian roars. “This is serious!”

Sebastian looks from Kurt’s face, to Thomas’s face, the boy huddling behind his father’s legs, hugging the swear jar to his chest, while his loyal Labradoodle puppy stands guard at his feet.

“Jes—“ Sebastian cuts himself short, patting down his pockets, sullen and annoyed. He turns away from his husband and son without a word and heads for the door.

“Sebastian? Honey?”

Kurt doesn’t move with Thomas attached tightly to his legs, but from where they stand in the kitchen, stunned, they can hear Sebastian climb into his Mustang and slam the car door.

Father and son are silent in the wake of an absent Sebastian.

“Papa?” Thomas’s meek voice squeaks from his hiding place. “Papa? Where is daddy going?”

“I…I don’t know, Thomas,” Kurt says, looking down at the little boy. Wide, watery eyes stare back up at him.

“Is he…is he going to come back?” the boy asks, his voice wavering slightly.

“Oh, Thomas,” Kurt coos, mussing the boy’s hair, “of course he will…”

 _Eventually_ , Kurt thinks with dismay, but of this he can be completely certain.

Sebastian would never leave them.

That doesn’t mean he might not do something completely stupid and reckless in the meantime.

The sound of the car door slamming and the house door opening again startles the pair, who stare back at each other for the briefest second before Sebastian storms in again, his left hand tucked slightly behind his back. He looks at Kurt, then at Thomas, and sighs. He kneels down, coming eye to eye with the boy. Sebastian pets Hepburn first, letting the dog know that everything is okay. Sebastian grabs the full Mason jar around the middle, pulls it carefully out of Thomas’s hands, and sets it down on the kitchen table. From behind his back, he produces an empty Mason jar and puts it in Thomas’s hands. Then he reaches his hand into his pocket and pulls out a roll of quarters – a survivor of the prior week’s midnight arcade-a-palooza adventure that Kurt wasn’t all too thrilled about until he beat Sebastian at air hockey three times in a row. He shows the roll to Thomas, whose eyes go wide, envisioning the tirade his father is preparing if he plans to use up all those quarters. Instead, Sebastian opens the end of the paper cylinder and dumps the whole roll into the jar with a loud crash of metal against glass.

“Why don’t we just assume that everything I was going to say for the next ten minutes was full of cursing, and skip to the end.”

“What happens at the end?” Thomas asks, a small smile twitching at the corner of his lips, his body relaxing into the crook of Kurt’s knee.

“Well, I apologize for abusing the power of the swear jar,” Sebastian says, leaning in close and touching noses with his son, a slow smile burning on the boy’s face, while Kurt gazes down at the two and shakes his head. “And then…PIZZA AND ICE-CREAM!”

Sebastian grabs Thomas out from behind his husband’s legs and tickles him until the previously anxious boy dissolves into a pile of snorts and giggles.

“Stop!” he chokes out between laughs, “I can’t…breathe…”

“If you can talk, you can breathe,” Sebastian says, tickling the boy mercilessly for a moment longer. He picks him up and sets him on his feet. “Now, why don’t you go get Hepburn’s vest and we’ll head out?”

Thomas’s eyes light up at the mention of Hepburn’s vest, pleased and proud that the Labradoodle had finally finished training and earned full service dog status in the form of a bright red vest.

Sebastian stands and Kurt loops his arms around his husband’s neck.

“Did I do good?” Sebastian asks, kissing Kurt slowly around his mouth, down his chin, along his jaw, up to his ear.

“Well, you haven’t exactly apologized to _me_ yet,” Kurt says.

“I thought maybe I could apologize to you later…” Sebastian sucks Kurt’s earlobe into his mouth and nibbles gentle.

“Mmm,” Kurt hums, “and how do you intend on doing that?”

“I thought maybe, after the munchkin’s asleep, I could try to get _you_ to fill up the swear jar.” Sebastian tilts his head, his lips curling into that cocky grin that Kurt finds way too enticing.

“But we agreed that anything that happens in the bedroom doesn’t count,” Kurt reminds him, “especially if Thomas doesn’t hear.”

“What if we manage to wake him up?” Sebastian smirks, licking the shell of Kurt’s ear.

“Then we’d better stop spending the swear jar money on pizza and ice-cream and start saving it.”

Sebastian pulls away from Kurt and looks into his amused blue eyes.

“For what?” Sebastian asks, intrigued.

“For therapy,” Kurt laughs, “because if he walks in on us doing the things that make me swear, then he’s going to need it.”


	8. The Cupcake Calamity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is another one-shot from my ‘Daddies’ series, featuring Kurt and Sebastian (well, mostly Kurt) making cupcakes last minute for a bake sale at their son’s school. This one is inspired by personal events, and mentions one of my fave San Diego bakeries. Warning for mention of sex and foul language, and the mention of anxiety issues in a child. Originally, Thomas was going to make an appearance, but it’s past his bed time ;) AU, FutureFic, humor

“Are you sure there wasn’t _any other time_ in the last two weeks that you could have told me Thomas would need 120 cupcakes by tomorrow morning?” Kurt asks in a mock cheerful voice while angrily whisking away at his signature cherry red velvet cupcake batter and glaring murderously at his husband.

“Probably,” Sebastian answers with a shrug and an infuriating sense of calm. He meets Kurt’s glare and has the balls to look unrepentant. “Sorry, babe. I just forgot.”

It was on one of the mornings when Sebastian takes Thomas to school that Thomas’s teacher, Mrs. Henderson, had told Sebastian about the school’s annual Penny Bake Sale. She had even given him a bright orange flyer. He only half-listened at the time when she explained about Kaplan School’s ingenious plan to nail parent’s twice for donations during the course of one fundraiser. Parents pay the school money which is put into their student’s “accounts” so that they can buy treats at the bake sale. On the day of, the kids come to school with a pocketful of pennies and use those to make their purchases. Kids are allowed to buy until their account runs dry. Along with being a fundraiser, it’s also supposed to be a lesson in math and budgeting for the kids. Sebastian smirked while he listened. This school seemed to have a way to suck the fun out of everything. That’s probably why Kurt loves it so frickin’ much.

Once he heard the words ‘bake sale’, Sebastian pledged 120 cupcakes, which thrilled Mrs. Henderson to no end because Kurt’s cupcakes are legendary. But Sebastian was worried about Thomas in all of this. His son isn’t all that good at math and the concept of budgeting is foreign to him, no matter how hard Kurt tries to help the boy manage his allowance. When Thomas doesn’t have a firm grasp of a concept, he stresses out really easily and that usually results in a level 18 meltdown. Sebastian doesn’t want to be a helicopter parent. He doesn’t want to have to attend the bake sale and hover over him, telling him what he can buy and what he can’t, so to circumvent the problem Sebastian wrote a check for $30 to put into Thomas’s account.

If Thomas spends $30 on treats that cost a penny, someone had fucking better find a way to stop him, tantrum or no.

Sebastian had left the school, prepared to call Kurt and let him know about the cupcakes he would have to bake, but as luck would have it, Kurt sent him a particularly filthy text along with an explicit picture, and all thoughts of bake sales and cupcakes flew straight out of his head.

Later on that same day, Sebastian used the bright orange bake sale flyer in a pinch to clean up after Hepburn, Thomas’s pet Labradoodle and service animal, during one of their impromptu after school trips to the park. Sebastian wasn’t worried. He was sure he would remember the information and relay it to his husband.

Apparently, he was mistaken.

Which is why Kurt has been in the kitchen for the past two hours at nearly eleven o’clock at night, whisking away, with a small army of cupcakes already baked and sitting in tiny, multi-colored foil cups on the kitchen island.

“You know, considering the fact that Thomas’s class is filled with kids who are all on special diets and have bizarre food allergies, it seems that we should be exempt from this insanity,” Sebastian comments, doing his best to show solidarity for his poor, overworked husband while all the while eying the cupcakes in front of him, making moves to confiscate one of the cupcakes in the red foil cups closest to him.

“First of all, this is a _fundraiser_ for the _school_ ,” Kurt explains with a thick helping of condescension, “and as Thomas attends Kaplan School, that means _we_ participate, and second of all, that is why Mrs. Henderson took the liberty of giving me a thorough and organized list of everyone’s various food needs.”

Sebastian looks over the tops of the cupcakes to a color-coded list stuck in the pages of Kurt’s recipe book on the counter. Sebastian’s eyes went wide.

“Which means what?” he asks.

Kurt huffs, blowing out a breath through his lips that lifts his bangs off his forehead. He stops whisking.

“That means that this batch of 60 cupcakes are regular red velvet cupcakes for the _normal_ kids...” He says the word _normal_ with a ridiculous amount of emphasis, and somehow manages to do the equivalent of air quotes with his expressive eyebrows. “The ones in the blue foil cups are gluten-free. The ones in the red foil cups are sugar-free…”

“Ewww…” Sebastian comments, looking back with disgust at the red foil cupcake he was preparing to snag moments before.

“The ones in the green foil cups are peanut-oil free, and the ones in the gold foil cups have no potassium.”

Sebastian sits back and furrows his brow.

“Why the fuck…”

“I don’t know!” Kurt laments in frustration, going back to his whisking. “Steven’s mother says he can’t eat potassium. I don’t particularly care why, but there has to be at least ten cupcakes for each frickin’ kid ergo a batch of super-dense potassium-free cupcakes! God save the Queen!”

Sebastian wants to laugh. He wants to laugh at his adorably overwrought husband pouring out his tenth batch of cupcakes. He wants to laugh at the flour dusted over Kurt’s designer pajamas. He wants to laugh at the way Kurt mutters curses at Sebastian underneath his breath, and at the blissful domesticity of watching his husband in the kitchen.

But Sebastian spies a spattering of red velvet batter at the hollow of Kurt’s neck, and all of his attention focuses on that…and his need to lick it off.

Sebastian stands from his stool over by the fleet of cupcakes to sneak up on Kurt who is focused on his cupcake pan, but stops when he notices Kurt’s entire body go rigid. Sebastian figures it’s because Kurt senses Sebastian walking towards him, and he’s not in the mood to be touched, but he sees Kurt’s blue eyes stare down at the counter, or is it his hands, and then up at the cupcakes with panic on his face. He stands up straight, raising his hands and grabbing at his hair in clumps.

“OhmyGod!” Kurt exclaims. “OhmyGodOhmyGodOhmyGod!”

“Kurt?”

Sebastian immediately races over to his husband, overwhelmed with concern at the look on Kurt’s face, which has gone pale in less than a second.

“My ring…” Kurt mumbles, his eyes searching the tops of the cupcakes as if they might hold the answer.

“What?” Sebastian asks with confusion, following Kurt’s gaze to the cupcakes sitting quietly lined up in their neat, perfect rows.

“My ring!” Kurt repeats, pulling his left hand out of his hair and showing it to Sebastian. “My wedding ring! It’s gone! It must have slipped off while I was baking and now…”

He doesn’t finish his sentence. He can’t. It’s lodged in his throat at the thought of exactly where his ring has ended up…and what they would need to do to find it.

“Oh God,” Sebastian mutters, but even as Kurt trembles with frustration and anger beside him, he has to clamp his teeth over his tongue to keep from laughing.

This is definitely not the time.

“It’s okay,” Sebastian says, running his hands down Kurt’s arms, stealing a last, longing glance at that spot of batter on Kurt’s neck that is simply begging him to run his tongue over it. “We’ll cut the cupcakes open carefully, this way we can glue them back together…”

Kurt turns on Sebastian with an eyebrow raised and a grimace on his face.

“Glue?” Kurt asks.

“You know, with frosting or something…”

Sebastian thought it was a reasonable compromise, but his suggestion seems to frustrate Kurt more. Kurt sighs, the kind of full body sigh that deflates a defeated human body like a balloon. He turns his head to look at the oven clock and groans.

“It’s fucking midnight,” Kurt says. “I’m sixty cupcakes behind, and I can’t even see straight anymore. Everything just looks red.” He reaches out a hand and turns off the oven. “I’m going to bed.”

Kurt pulls away from Sebastian’s hands on his arms and heads for the door.

“But…but what about your ring…and the cupcakes?”

Kurt puts a hand to his head and squeezes his bleary eyes shut.

“You got us into this mess,” Kurt mumbles. “You can get us out.”

Sebastian looks down at the mass of cupcakes - one of which has essentially swallowed his husband’s ring - then over to the cookbook with the recipe for Kurt’s masterpiece cupcakes that only _he_ can seem to get perfect, and finally to that color-coded list.

“But…but…wait a minute,” Sebastian says, chasing after Kurt and blocking his way, “I really wanted to get with you tonight…” Sebastian is pleading, his voice low, his lips closing in on that prized spot of batter. “I’ve been thinking about you all day.”

“Well,” Kurt says, pulling back right before Sebastian’s lips can touch Kurt’s skin, leaving Sebastian to whimper in its wake, “if you can think of a way to find my ring and replace 120 cupcakes in the next 20 minutes, then I promise to ride you into the fucking mattress. But after I’ve taken a nice, hot shower, I intend to be in bed and asleep, so if you wake me up, I’m going to start removing body parts…” Kurt leans in to his husband’s ear, “and I promise they will be parts that you will miss.”

Kurt backs away, spinning on one heel and blowing out the door.

Sebastian swallows hard.

He turns back to the sea of cupcakes, all of them mocking him now.

He gets an idea. He picks up a fork and starts stabbing at some of the cupcakes, trying to see if the tines make contact with something hard and titanium, but after twenty cupcakes he finds nothing. To top it off, the once pert pastries start to sink in on themselves from all the holes, rendering them completely unusable. Kurt would never stoop to selling flat cupcakes, even to children.

Sebastian looks at the time on the clock and grumbles.

Five minutes wasted, and still no closer to a ring or cupcakes.

How the fuck did Kurt expect him to fix this?

It reminds him of the birthday party they went to for Wes’s daughter, Emily. She has some strange gluten/sugar issue, too, and they had to order her cake from some specialty bakery downtown. Wes showed up twenty minutes late, but he had forgotten to pick it up on the way to the venue like he promised.

Luckily, they delivered.

Sebastian jerks upright, struck by the bolt of an amazing idea. He yanks out his iPhone and pulled up a browser window.

“Please have a website, please have a website, please have a website…” he mutters, searching the Web for a listing for Gloria’s Bakery. “Bingo!”

And there it was. Salvation. Kurt said that Sebastian needed to find a way to replace 120 cupcakes. He never said Sebastian had to make them himself. He clicks on the hyperlink for _place an order._ He looks down the options for cupcakes and finds a section for special orders and express delivery.

_Cupcakes ordered before 3 a.m. can be ready for same day delivery during normal bakery hours with a surcharge of $35 per dozen._

$350 in delivery costs on a $147 order of cupcakes?

Sebastian pictures Kurt for a second, gloriously naked, his pale skin glowing and marked with red cupcake batter waiting for Sebastian to lick it off.

Sebastian chuckles.

“Totally worth it,” he says, selecting the cupcakes, entering his credit card number, and placing his order. “Okay,” he recounts out loud to himself, “sixty regular red velvet cupcakes, twenty gluten-free, ten peanut-oil free, twenty sugar-free, and ten potassium-free for freak show Steven - why, we don’t know.”

He looks at the cupcakes on the counter and smiles.

This next part is going to be fun, but first he has to set the mood.

He scrolls through the music selections on his phone and selects Mussorgsky’s _Night on Bald Mountain_.

Never let it be said that Sebastian Smythe ever did anything in halves.

With the orchestral score rising and falling behind him, he tears through the cupcakes with his hands, pulling them apart in search of his husband’s ring. The carnage of the cakes is brushed to the floor as cupcake after cupcake is decimated, and still no ring.

 _Wouldn’t it be hilariously ironic,_ Sebastian thinks, _if the ring didn’t fall into the cupcake batter at all? What if Kurt left it by the sink in the bathroom, or his bedside table…_

Sebastian smiles as he ruins the next cupcake in his hands. He knows Kurt didn’t take it off. Kurt always said that the only way someone would get that ring off his hand would be to cut off his finger.

It’s in the body of that last, traitorous, red foiled cupcake that Sebastian finds Kurt’s ring, winking up at him. Sebastian wipes the ring off as best he can with a dish towel and kisses it. Sebastian has never been much of a jewelry man, but this one ring means the world to him. Sebastian looks at the clock. Three minutes left. He’s cutting it down to the wire, but he’ll just make it.

Sebastian rounds the corner, slipping on the remnants of destroyed cupcake littered all over the linoleum floor. He takes a look down and catches a glimpse at his clothes, also covered in cake, and strips them off, tossing them aside and racing to his room in nothing but his deep red briefs with the ring clutched in his hands.

He doesn’t know what Kurt was complaining about. Bake sales are no big thing.


	9. Camping 101

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kurt and Sebastian take their son Thomas camping for the first time.
> 
> This one-shot was written for the Kurtbastian Hiatus Project prompt 'camping'.
> 
> FutureFic, angst, AU, humor, fluff.

_Scritch-scritch…crunch-crunch…(wiggle)_

_Crinkle-crinkle…crinkle-crinkle…(shimmy)_

_(Bounce-bounce-turn)…(shimmy-shimmy-turn)…_

“Fuck!” Sebastian groans, his whisper hushed but in the quiet of the tent, it’s harsh and loud.

“Sebastian!” Kurt hisses over his shoulder. “Language! I don’t want Thomas to hear you.”

“I can’t help it!” Sebastian whines. “The ground is hard and I think a root is digging into my hip.”

“Well, _you_ set up the tent,” Kurt chides. “You have no one to blame but yourself.”

“Yes, I do.” Sebastian nudges Kurt in the back with his knuckle. “I blame _you_.”

Kurt scoots back a bit, leaning on his side to peek at his husband in their cramped quarters, careful not to wake their son who is resting in his sleeping bag an inch away from Kurt’s nose.

“Me?” Kurt asks, incredulous to his husband’s outrageous accusation. “Whose idea was it to go camping anyway?”

“Irrelevant,” Sebastian replies smugly.

“Irrelevant!?” Kurt nearly forgets himself and yells. “You were the one saying how you wanted Thomas to have the same rough and tough experiences you had as a boy. _Take him out camping. Let him rough it. It’ll put hair on his chest._ Those were your exact words!”

“Maybe,” Sebastian concedes. “But whose job is it to make sure we don’t follow through with my stupid ideas?”

Kurt sighs, turning back over on his side away from his husband.

“Well, excuse me for thinking _this_ idea had merit.”

“When does sleeping out in the cold ever have merit?” Sebastian argues.

“I don’t know,” Kurt sneers, kicking his leg back an inch and nailing Sebastian in the shin. “I’m quite enjoying myself,” he says sarcastically. “Aren’t you?”

“Yup, I’m enjoying myself alright,” Sebastian sneers back. “All 6’ 2” of me shoved in a two-person tent that smells like old farts with a dog’s ass in my face.”

Sebastian looks up for good measure at the quietly snoozing Labradoodle whose hind legs are resting on his head.

“First of all, this is _your_ old scout tent,” Kurt points out. “And dog butt can’t be helped. You know we couldn’t leave Hepburn behind.”

Sebastian and Kurt sigh in unison.

“Look,” Kurt says. “We’ve only got, oh, seven hours till sunrise. Why not, in the interest of family fun, we make the best of things and then chalk this up to a learning experience.”

Sebastian sighs again, but the tension in his body relaxes when Kurt snuggles back against him.

“Okay,” he relents. “I’ll make the best of it, but I won’t like it.”

Kurt reaches back and pats Sebastian on the cheek.

“That’s all I ask.”

Sebastian grabs the opportunity and kisses Kurt’s fingers.

“Besides, it looks like Thomas is enjoying himself,” Kurt says.

Sebastian lifts up a bit on one arm to look over Kurt’s body at his sleeping son.

“Yeah,” Sebastian says with a fond grin. “Little guy’s out like a light.”

Sebastian settles back down beside his husband and prepares himself for an uncomfortable night of non-sleep.

The silence creeps in around them until all they can hear is the sound of their own breathing.

And then, a small voice pipes up.

“Daddy?” Thomas mutters. “Papa?”

Sebastian rises back up on his elbow to look down in Kurt’s face while Kurt looks bemusedly back at him.

“Yes, Tom-Tom?” Sebastian asks his surprisingly wide awake son.

The boy pauses a moment to choose his words carefully.

“This kind of stinks.”

Kurt stifles a laugh and Sebastian shakes his head.

“No, son,” Sebastian says. “That’s the tent.”

Kurt can’t help himself, barking out with a laugh that wakes the poor, drowsy dog.

“Can we stop camping?” Thomas pleads.

“We thought you fell asleep hours ago, sweetie.” Kurt cranes a hand up between them and ruffles Thomas’s hair.

“No, I was just pretending so you wouldn’t feel bad,” the boy admits. “And daddy?”

“Yeah, Tom-Tom?” Sebastian asks.

“You owe the swear jar a quarter.”

That comment makes Kurt laugh louder, but Sebastian pounces on the boy, struggling to tickle him through his thick sleeping bag, the whole tent rustling and swaying as if caught up in a strong wind.

“Okay, okay, okay,” Kurt chortles, trying to separate father and son. “Let’s pack it in. This tent is too small for all this rough housing.”

“Fine,” Sebastian says, grabbing the giggling boy out from his sleeping bag, unzipping the door of the tent, and dragging him out. “Urgh!” Sebastian stands up straight, groaning when his spine crackles and snaps as he stretches to his full height with his son tossed over his shoulder. He takes a deep breath of the night air to clear the foul stench of the tent from his nostrils, then turns on his heel and heads for the house.

“Thank goodness we stayed in the front yard,” Kurt comments, following his husband and son out.

“Shouldn’t we bring the tent in?” Thomas asks, keeping an eye on Hepburn to make sure his dog follows them inside.

“Nah,” Sebastian says. “If someone needs a skunky ass tent that badly, they can take the damn thing.”

“That’s another quarter,” Thomas chirps. Kurt shakes his head as he hears the boy dissolve into giggles at the hands of his husband. Kurt waits for the dog to race inside the house and locks the door behind them.


	10. Travesty in G Minor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kurt and Sebastian (not quite) enjoying their son's first concert.
> 
> This was written for the Kurtbastian Hiatus Project prompt 'concert'. Short, fluffy, warning for language.

“Oh…my…God…” Sebastian groans, raking his fingernails down his face, pulling at the skin, the pads of his fingers catching on his lips, tugging them at the corners.

“Shhh,” Kurt hisses from behind his digital camera as he records the group of students, including their son Thomas, gathered on stage. “I don’t want your bitching to overshadow our son’s genius.”

“How can you even hear our _son’s genius_?” Sebastian moans, ignoring the shushing of other parents around them. “This is a train wreck.”

“It’s a _recital_ ,” Kurt corrects, holding the camera farther away in the hopes of not picking up his husband’s complaining.

“It’s an assassination attempt using kazoos,” Sebastian mutters under his breath, savvy to the murderous glares he’s receiving all around him.

“They’re recorders, not kazoos,” Kurt says with a forced smile as he silently tries to assuage the faces snapping in his direction. “All first year music students start out with recorders.”

“It’s a tragedy.” Sebastian sighs, sinking down in his seat. “A murder. They’re murdering Bach. I didn’t even know that someone could die twice.”

A particularly sharp _sqwak_! fills the air, and the entire auditorium of parents wedged into too hard seats reflexively cringes.

“Apparently, you can,” Sebastian whispers, and Kurt sputters, unable to control the laughter he’d been holding back since this disastrous rendition of _Minuet in G Minor_ had started.

Seeing a crack forming in Kurt’s resolve, Sebastian decides to see how far he can break it.

“Has this piece always been 43 hours long, or does it just feel that way?”

Kurt sniffles, shaking his head, then straightening his back and focusing ahead in his patented _I’m ignoring you_ stance.

Sebastian moves in closer to his husband, refusing to be brushed aside.

“You know what would make this performance better?” he asks. “A handful of dying cats and a tuba.”

Kurt bites his lip, his cheeks quivering, but he doesn’t otherwise acknowledge Sebastian’s remark. Sebastian knows he doesn’t have much farther to go though. He can tell when Kurt’s about to lose it. He crosses his legs, then he swallows hard, and he shakes his head to clear his thoughts – all three of which he does while Sebastian watches.

“Hey…what if those things are actually alien creatures and not musical instruments?”

Kurt rolls his eyes at the ridiculousness that is his husband and continues taping undeterred.

“And what if…” Sebastian whispers on, “every time a kid messes up and those recorders screech, it’s actually the aliens cursing?”

Kurt sighs dramatically, the only concession he gives to Sebastian’s adolescent remark.

But just then a recorder squeaks, and Sebastian whispers, “Fuck!”

Kurt’s lower lip creeps slowly between his teeth and he bites down hard.

Another recorder squeals and Sebastian whispers, “Shit!”

A laugh gurgles up from Kurt’s throat, but it stays trapped inside his mouth.

Several recorders stumble over the same strain and Kurt’s mouth trembles before Sebastian even says a word.

“Motherfucker!” Sebastian says, which catches the attention of the woman behind them and she lets fly with a loud, obnoxious, “Shhhhh!”

“Stop!” Kurt mouths, but Sebastian can’t. He’s running out of time. Unless the group reprises the next coda (which they did once already and Sebastian prays they don’t), the piece will be finished in the next few measures. He pulls out all the stops and comes up with the one word that (for some bizarre and unexplained reason) never fails to make Kurt laugh.

Sebastian leans over the arm rest, following Kurt as he tries to lean away, almost resting against the gentleman to his left in an effort to escape his husband. With nowhere to go, Kurt holds his breath, counting out the measures in his head, confident that Sebastian can’t do any more damage this close to the end of the piece. The man to his left sits up suddenly, forcing Kurt back in his chair.

“Excuse me,” Kurt whispers when the man turns and gives Kurt an awkward look.

Kurt sits upright with Sebastian smack dab next to his ear just as he whispers, “Penis.”

The piece of music ends with an off-key flourish and Kurt – red faced and shaking bodily – laughs into the silence so loudly that it echoes around the auditorium. Two hundred and twenty-six faces turn in unison in Kurt’s direction.

Feeling triumphant but slightly guilty about taking all the attention away from the kids on stage, Sebastian leaps to his feet, clapping loudly.

“Bravo, guys!” he calls at the top of his lungs. “Beautiful! Well, done!”

The room of gawking parents begins to applaud slowly, turning their faces away from Kurt, who is doubled over in his seat, his face hiding between his knees. Soon, more parents are on their feet as the students on stage bow proudly, holding their recorders high in the air. Sebastian whistles and waves to Thomas, who sees his dad and waves enthusiastically back. Then Sebastian sinks back down in his chair beside his husband.

“Thanks for covering for me,” Kurt says, his voice muffled since he hasn’t lifted his head up yet.

“No problem, babe,” Sebastian says, putting an arm around Kurt’s huddled shoulders. “Anything I can do to help.”

“Good,” Kurt says, sitting up finally and collecting his things, “because there’s something else you can do for me.”

“What’s that?” Sebastian stands with Kurt, feeling benevolent after his big victory.

Kurt turns his head over his shoulder and flashes steely eyes his husband’s way.

“You can drop dead.”


	11. Changing Colors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sebastian has to comfort Kurt when he ends up having a bad hair day on one of the biggest nights of his life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by the prompt ‘bad hair day’. Warning for language.

Sebastian fumbles his keys, stabbing blindly for the key hole. On the third try he somehow manages to unlock and open the door to the house. He has no idea how seeing as his arms are full of crap - the evidence of a day’s worth of running errands. Thomas and Hepburn crowd at his heels, trying to push past him. Sebastian moves a hip to let them through, losing his grip on his key ring and sending it crashing to the floor.

“Take Heppy into your room and get started on your homework,” Sebastian says, kicking his keys into the house and then tapping the distracted boy gently on the rump with the toe of his shoe. “Remember, your uncle Wes is coming over tonight to babysit you, so I want you showered before he comes.”

“Alright, daddy,” the little boy calls back, letting his Labradoodle drag him through the living room and into his bedroom.

“Kurt!” Sebastian calls, attempting to locate his husband from behind a small mountain of groceries. “Kurt, where are you?” He kicks the front door shut, lays out their dry cleaning on the sofa, and carries the bags full of groceries and a handful of mail into the kitchen. “Kurt, come on, babe,” Sebastian yells throughout the house. “We’re burning daylight. We’ve got to get our asses in gear if we’re going to make it to your shindig on time.”

Sebastian reaches their master bathroom and is stopped by a locked door.

“Kurt?” Sebastian calls through the door. A tiny whimper answers him. Sebastian half-expected this – Kurt Hummel and his infamous stage fright. The amount of vomiting he did when he first snagged the role of Sweeny Todd on Broadway was almost legendary. He must have lost about ten pounds within the space of the first ten performances. The gossip rags had a field day with that, but Kurt rose above it all.

Of course, that was years ago. Sebastian smirks at the thought of his gorgeous husband bent over the porcelain throne over an elementary school fundraiser, finding it adorable that after all these years he would still get so nervous before an event – _any_ event. Though, to be fair, Sebastian has to admit that this isn’t just _any_ event. When Kurt took over as head of the Kaplan School’s annual Las Vegas Night Fundraiser, he pulled out all the stops, called in every favor he could from the names in his little black book. Through a lot of hard work and persuasion, Kurt had managed to perform miracles. Big names had already RSVP’d – designers, musicians, network celebrities.

Kurt had a reason to be nervous, but a lot more reason to be proud.

Sebastian raps lightly on the door with his knuckles, and the whimpering from inside the bathroom intensifies.

“Come on, Kurt,” he pleads. “I was really looking forward to a quickie before tonight. What do you say? It’ll help you relax.”

“I…something horrible happened, Sebastian.”

Sebastian feels his stomach drop. That’s not exactly the thing he wants to hear when his husband is crying in a locked bathroom.

“Kurt,” Sebastian says, “what happened? Let me in.”

Sebastian hears a sniffle, some shuffling, and then the door unlock. He turns the knob and pushes the door in, immediately spotting his husband curled up on the bathroom floor.

His husband…with a head full of bright orange hair.

Sebastian stares, at a complete and utter loss for words, knowing that a single snicker might end up being the death of him, so he opts for a blank, shocked expression.

But somewhere inside, he’s dying to burst out laughing.

“Oh…my…God…” Sebastian says, breathing deep after each word to keep from breaking down unintentionally. “Babe, pray tell, why did you choose tonight of all nights to go punk rock?”

“I…I didn’t do this on purpose!” Kurt wails, pulling a handful of toilet paper from the roll, not even tearing it off before he blows his nose into it. “I just wanted a few highlights. You know, like I had when I interned at Vogue? All those people coming tonight – they know me, and I didn’t want them to think I let myself go now that we live out in the sticks…”

“Mm-hmm,” Sebastian says with a nod, trying to be serious and supportive while he nearly bites his tongue in two to keep from saying something he’ll regret.

“But I couldn’t get an appointment with Carlos in time for the fundraiser tonight,” Kurt continues, hiccupping at every pause, “so I thought I’d buy some box color and try it myself.” Kurt reaches up and pulls down a lock to look at it, then immediately dissolves into tears.

Sebastian’s brow furrows.

“So, did you specifically choose orange…”

“I don’t know what happened!” Kurt interrupts, crying furiously, blowing his red nose into his crumpled toilet tissue. “It’s a tone on tone colorant. It was just supposed to give me subtle highlights…” He grabs the box and shakes it at Sebastian, trying to prove his point, not that Sebastian can read the words on the box with the way Kurt is flinging it back and forth, “but instead I got this!” He jabs an index finger in the direction of his head.

“Well, whose tone were you trying for?” Sebastian asks, grabbing for the box to look at the instructions. “The Great Pumpkin?”

Kurt shakes his head, yanking the toilet paper until the roll starts spinning like mad.

“What the hell am I supposed to do, Sebastian?” Kurt whines through his tears. “We have to be at the benefit in an hour!”

“Maybe we can just call and tell them your aunt died and you can’t make it?” Sebastian suggests, grasping at hypothetical straws.

“I’m chairing the fundraiser!” Kurt bellows. “I can’t just cancel. I have to be there!”

“Well, do you want me to run to the store and get you another box of color so you can dye it back to brown?” Sebastian slides down the wall, sitting beside his husband on the bathroom floor.

“My hair is _not_ brown,” Kurt mumbles in disgust, blowing his nose. “It’s Autumn Chestnut, and I don’t want to over-process my hair. Besides, there’s no time.”

Sebastian nods his head, trying to come up with a feasible plan to help.

“Do you want to try shoe polish?”

Kurt looks up at Sebastian, eyebrows raised, and for a moment he looks like he might actually laugh.

His face crumbles, and he cries harder instead. The sound makes Sebastian’s entire body hurt.

“This is ridiculous!” Sebastian says, rising to his knees in front of his husband and shaking him lightly by the shoulders. “What are you doing? You are Kurt Hummel-Smythe. You don’t let little things like neon-colored hair derail you.”

Kurt pulls some clean toilet tissue from the roll and dabs under his eyes, nodding in agreement.

“You want to know what you’re going to do?” Sebastian continues his pep talk. “I’m going to tell you what you’re going to do. You are going to hold your head up high…” He puts a finger beneath Kurt’s chin and raises his gaze, “and go to that event, orange hair be damned. And if anyone there can’t handle it, then fuck them! Fuck them right up the ass because they don’t matter.”

Kurt chuckles brokenly, looking up at Sebastian with watery eyes and a smile on his wavering lips.

“Do…do you still think I’m beautiful?” Kurt asks, shamelessly fishing for a compliment before he pulls himself together and gets back to the business of getting ready.

“Of course, you’re still beautiful,” Sebastian says, baby talking Kurt a little to humor him and pressing a kiss to his forehead. “You will always be the most handsome man I have ever seen.”

Kurt nods as he leans into his husband’s arms, taking a deep breath in and letting it out slowly. Sebastian plants another kiss onto the top of Kurt’s head, his eyes glancing down at the carrot-colored nest of hair tickling his nose.

“Thank you, Sebastian,” Kurt mutters, bringing his tissue to his nose and blowing it one last time.

“Hey,” Sebastian says, taking a longer, closer look at Kurt’s demolished do, “for you, anything. I just have one question.” Sebastian holds Kurt tighter.

“Yes?” Kurt asks calmly, his voice muffled by Sebastian’s shirt.

“You’re not going to sit anywhere near me, are you?”


	12. Sebastian of the Corn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here is a one-shot I wrote for the Kurtbastian Hiatus Project prompt ‘corn maze’. The title is a throwback to the ‘Children of the Corn’ movies. It’s just a bit of fluffy humor with the family trying to make it through a corn maze.

It’s been over 45 minutes already, and the sky is starting to get dark. Kurt walks along the outside row of corn stalks with Thomas and his dog Hepburn in tow, peeking through the gaps in between the plants in search of his husband.

“Where is he, Papa?” the little boy asks as he shadows his father’s footsteps.

“I don’t know, Thomas,” Kurt answers, rising up on his tiptoes to try and see over the hedge of corn.

“Do you think he’s going to be much longer?” Thomas asks. “Because I’m starting to get hungry.”

“I know, I know,” Kurt says, stopping and exhaling into the cool night air. He leads Thomas back to the entrance of the maze and they wait there for a moment, watching as kids and parents race in and out with ease, but when - after fifteen minutes - they see no sign of Sebastian, Kurt goes back to pacing along the outside wall with his son in hopes of catching a glimpse of his husband.

Kurt is about to ask the attendant at the front entrance for help when his phone vibrates in his pocket. He feels relieved, but he still rolls his eyes, answering it without even checking the incoming number.

“You know, if you wanted to get rid of me, divorce is a completely rational option. You didn’t have to abandon me in a field in the middle of nowhere to die.”

“Seb,” Kurt says with a chuckle, “we’re in a mall parking lot. We’re hardly in the middle of nowhere.”

“Yeah, well, you’re not the one trapped in the corn maze of death,” Sebastian says. “Are you sure that this isn’t just a crop circle and I’ve been transported to an alien ship? That would explain why my service is so frickin’ spotty.”

“I would like to think that a race of hyper-intelligent alien beings would have better sense than to construct a crop circle outside of K-Mart,” Kurt huffs, checking his watch for the time. “Look, could you hurry it up? Some of us are wasting away out here.”

“So what’s the goal of this again?” Sebastian continues as he stomps through three inches of hay in search of the exit. “Am I trying to find a port key or do I have to fight a Minotaur…”

“I don’t understand this. Thomas and I made it in and out in ten minutes,” Kurt remarks. He sees a small mob of kids come around the corner, cheering, and he can’t help chuckling. Kurt has seen the same three kids come in and out of that maze in the last hour since Sebastian’s been lost.

“Yeah, well, you guys had the dog,” Sebastian argues.

“Don’t give me that, Smythe,” Kurt says, keeping an eye on Thomas to make sure he doesn’t misinterpret his and Sebastian’s banter as fighting. Thomas still has a few insecurity issues as far as that is concerned. “You didn’t come with us because you said bringing Hepburn along was cheating! You wanted to make it through the maze using your _manly_ instincts. And F.Y.I., it’s not as if Hepburn is a search and rescue dog. He didn’t help us out of the maze one bit.”

“But…” Sebastian starts with a defense already in mind.

“ _And_ …” Kurt rails on as his stomach twists and gives a loud, famished growl, “might I remind you that your phone has GPS? You could have been out of there an hour ago.”

“Well, if I…wait…” Sebastian pauses. “Say that again?”

“Say what…”

“Kurt?” Kurt can hear Sebastian’s voice inside the maze nearby without the use of his phone. “Is that…where are you?”

Kurt rolls his eyes again.

“Well, I can’t exactly give you latitude and longitude…”

“Jesus Christmas, Kurt, just…hold up your hand and wave,” Sebastian groans, this time loud enough that Kurt knows he’s hearing him just a few feet away.

“Alright,” Kurt relents, raising his hand and waving it in the air, feeling justifiably ridiculous. “Hello!” he calls out with the phone pulled away from his ear. “Here I am! Yoo-hoo!”

 He hears a _shhhhhhick_! sound as the corn stalks in the maze in front of him begin to shudder and shake. The sound gets louder as another closer row of corn stalks make the same rustling sound. Finally, the stalks right in front of him start to quake wildly, and from within him, he hears a slightly pained groan. A leg clad in dark blue denim and an arm wearing a familiar Burberry coat sleeve break through, followed by another leg and arm, then a head, until the whole of Sebastian Smythe has stumbled from the maze, his hair and clothes a mass of dried corn stalk litter, leaving a human shaped hole in the wall.

Kurt slow claps, smirking at his disheveled husband.

“And _that_ wasn’t cheating?” Kurt asks while Sebastian dusts plant debris from his clothes.

“No,” Sebastian says, “that was intelligent planning.”

“What!?” Kurt barks, looking at the maze and back at Sebastian with an incredulous expression. “How do you figure that?”

“Well,” Sebastian explains, looking left and right to see if anyone from All-Season Productions has yet caught on to the fact that he destroyed part of their maze, “a huge ass maze made entirely of dry, flammable materials with only one entrance and one exit? No, see, that’s a safety code violation.”

Kurt raises an eyebrow and side-eyes the wall.

“So this is…” he says, gesturing to the hole, leaving his sentence open for an explanation.

“Pfft!” Sebastian says, blowing a piece of stalk off his lip as he mocks his husband for his denseness. “It’s a fire exit.”

Kurt drops his head and sighs, reaching out a hand for Thomas.

“You see,” Kurt says, grabbing hold of his son and leading him from the parking lot and the compromised maze, “this is why we can’t take you anywhere.”


	13. Meet Me Under the Mistletoe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kurt needs to find a creative way to get his husband on board with helping get their excited son, Thomas, to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the Kurtbastian Hiatus Project prompt ‘mistletoe’.
> 
> Holiday fluff with a few suggestive overtones.

Kurt crosses his arms over his chest and scowls as he watches his husband and son grapple around on the floor over a plastic The Flash Christmas ornament.

“ _I_ get to put it up,” Thomas argues, grunting beneath his father’s weight, holding the ornament over his head to keep it out of Sebastian’s reach.

“No, _I_ get to put it up,” Sebastian growls playfully, pretending that he can only barely reach the ornament that his son holds aloft in his tiny hand.

“Guys,” Kurt calls over the melee, clapping his hands to get their attention, “it’s time for bed. It’s _way_ past Thomas’s bedtime.”

The wrestling match halts with The Flash hovering above their heads, clutched in Thomas’s fist. Two faces turn towards Kurt, wearing disappointed frowns.

“Uhhhhh,” they both moan.

“But, Papa,” Thomas protests, “the tree is only half done.”

“Then we’ll finish it in the morning,” Kurt says.

“Can’t we finish it now?” Thomas whines in that annoying but forgivable way that excited children do during the holidays. “Pllleeeaaaasssseee?”

“Yeah, Kurt,” Sebastian adds. “Pllleeeeaaassseee?”

“Sebastian,” Kurt snaps, doing his best to curb his temper, “we talked about this. We need to show a unified front. Thomas needs to stick to his schedule.”

“But…but it’s Christmas,” Sebastian pouts in an exaggerated Tiny Tim-esque Cockney accent, and with a smile in his eyes.

“Sebastian,” Kurt says, tapping the toe of his foot, “it’s December 10th.”

“It’s Christmas _month_ ,” Sebastian corrects him, “and during Christmas month, every day in December is Christmas Eve until Christmas arrives. Everybody knows that.”

“Yeah,” Thomas agrees, copying his father’s smug tone, a recent practice that Kurt despises.

There’s a pause, thick with tension, while the duo on the floor stare up at their disciplinarian. Then, apparently without needing another word from Kurt, the two start wrestling around again. Thomas holds the coveted Flash ornament tight in his grasp, and Sebastian stands with the boy, lifting him up onto his shoulder and spinning him around like the propeller of a helicopter.

Kurt watches them and sighs, knowing that in five minutes he’ll be cleaning up kid vomit off the floor.

Kurt looks down at the open and forgotten boxes of Christmas decorations, a length of gold garland and a string of defective lights strewn out messily over the sofa, when he catches sight of something and an opportunity to end this bedtime struggle presents itself.

Kurt doesn’t like to resort to baser tactics when dealing with the disobedience of his husband and son, but he has no other alternative.

“Okay,” Kurt says, throwing his hands up in surrender, “you guys win.”

Sebastian stops spinning and looks at Thomas, and the two of them throw their fists triumphantly in the air.

“Yup,” Kurt continues, “you guys get to stay up as long as you both like, but first, I get to give daddy a kiss under the mistletoe.”

“Woo-hoo,” Sebastian coos, lowering the boy to the ground (who steals the opportunity to hang The Flash on the tree) and sashaying up to his husband. “Okay…so, where did you hang it, babe?”

Kurt stares Sebastian in the eyes while he tugs his husband toward him by his belt, fiddling with the end that sticks through the buckle, luring Sebastian to his lips with come hither eyes. Sebastian leans in, lips barely brushing Kurt’s, but Kurt backs away with a superior smile and a shake of his head. Sebastian stares at him questioningly, with a look of confusion on his face. Kurt’s eyes dart downward for a brief moment, and Sebastian’s eyes follow to where Kurt’s hands rest on his belt. There, dangling from the curl in the leather, Kurt has hung a sprig of fresh mistletoe.

Sebastian stares blankly at the new adornment on his belt.

It takes Sebastian a second before he fully comprehends, but when he does, he turns like a shot and races to the tree to gather up the little boy.

“Come on, Tom-Tom,” Sebastian says, barreling towards the boy’s bedroom with his giggling son slung over one shoulder, “we have to listen to Papa. It’s time you were asleep…deep, deep asleep…”


	14. The Gift of Memories for Christmas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the presents are wrapped and under the tree, Kurt and Sebastian sit back for a quiet moment to enjoy Christmas Eve when Sebastian gives Kurt a gift that makes his holiday perfect.
> 
> Written for the Kurtbastian Hiatus Project prompt ‘gifts’ and my ‘Daddies’ series.
> 
> Romance, fluff, AU, future fic.

Kurt yawns, lifting his arms over his head one at a time to stretch his back, every muscle in his spine and his sides aching from being bent over wrapping paper all night long. But it’s a satisfying ache – an ache that was part of the planning and implementing of their son’s first Christmas as part of their family.

The _Hummel-Smythe_ family.

Even now, eight hours before sun up, Kurt knows this holiday is going to be a tremendous success. He sits on the sofa where Sebastian waits with two glasses of egg nog, having gotten a head start on the Christmas celebrating now that the presents have been wrapped and stacked under the tree.

“We did good, Kurt,” Sebastian says, handing Kurt a glass and wrapping an arm around his husband’s shoulders. He looks up at their Christmas tree over the rim of his nog glass, eyes sweeping over all the carefully wrapped packages underneath, each one with a coordinating ribbon and bow.

“ _We_?” Kurt asks, looking at his husband with an eyebrow cocked. “What exactly did you do besides sit on the couch and watch porn on your laptop?”

“I picked out the wrapping paper,” Sebastian says, looking shocked and offended that Kurt would overlook his contribution.

“Big whoop,” Kurt says. “Thomas’s school was selling it. You just marked off the first thing on the form and wrote a check.”

“So what?” Sebastian scoffs. “We still got all this beautiful blue and silver paper.”

“It’s Chanukah paper!” Kurt exclaims with a chuckle.

“Don’t be a hater,” Sebastian says, pulling on Kurt’s shoulders till he reclines against Sebastian’s body. “Besides, it all worked out. It even matches your whole _Winter Wonderland_ aesthetic.”

Kurt turns his head and playfully sticks his tongue out at his husband because, dammit, he’s right. In that infuriating way that everything always seems to go unintentionally right for Sebastian Smythe, the blue and silver iridescent wrapping paper matched Kurt’s holiday theme perfectly. Kurt opted out of using the paper with the dreidels and the Star of David print, so he had to supplement last minute with paper he bought at Target, but yes, everything worked out.

In fact, everything turned out perfectly, down to the smallest detail – well, all except for maybe one thing. Kurt’s favorite ornament had gone missing. Apparently, it hadn’t made it into the ornament storage container after last Christmas. It’s a small thing, really. They had so many other beautiful ornaments – old _and_ new. These things just happen, with no explanation. He had to accept that some things go missing. It’s a way of life.

But it’s also another sad reminder of all the things in his life that he’s lost, during a time of year when his only focus should be the people that he has around him to love.

That includes the insufferable man placing a trail of nutmeg-scented kisses up the side of Kurt’s neck.

“Sooo, are you going to give me a present?” Sebastian asks, drawing the question out, the bourbon in the egg nog doing its part in helping him get his buzz going.

“Yes,” Kurt says, only taking a sip of his own drink. He doesn’t need a hangover when their son wakes them up at the evil crack of dawn, “and I told you that I was giving it to you tomorrow. We never did that _open one present on Christmas Eve_ thing at my house.”

“Well, it doesn’t have to be something from under the tree,” Sebastian says, finishing his drink in one gulp. “Holiday head is always an acceptable gift.”

Kurt rolls his eyes and shakes his head.

“I thought it was forbidden to have sex on Christmas Eve.”

“I thought you were an atheist,” Sebastian counters, putting down his glass and re-attacking his husband’s sensitive neck.

“I am,” Kurt giggles, jerking away when Sebastian licks a ticklish patch of skin. “It just seems…I don’t know… _wrong_ for some reason.”

“Well, _I_ have a present for you,” Sebastian says, picking Kurt up by the upper arms and moving him aside as he scrambles to get off the sofa and crawl across the floor toward the tree. Kurt shakes his head as he watches a tipsy Sebastian sloppily negotiate his way over to their Douglas fir.

“You’re not going to do that dick-in-a-box thing from SNL that you tried to pull on me last year, are you?” Kurt asks.

“Not this year babe,” Sebastian says, picking out a small, square box from beneath the tree and crawling back to the sofa with it in his grasp, veering left and right occasionally in the process. “I couldn’t find a box big enough.”

“I don’t know,” Kurt says, watching Sebastian climb up onto the sofa. “That box looks plenty big enough.”

Sebastian looks at Kurt with slightly unfocused eyes and a frown as Kurt throws his head back and laughs.

“You know, if you’re going to be a bitch…” Sebastian grouses, dropping down on his hands and knees and threatening to crawl the gift back over to the tree, but Kurt grabs him by the arm.

“No, no, please,” Kurt begs between chuckles, “I’m sorry. You’re right. That was mean. But you walked into it, love. I had to say it.”

Sebastian stops trying to crawl away and grins with a renewed appreciation for Kurt’s sense of humor.

“That’s true,” he says, sitting back on the couch and holding the box out to Kurt. “Here. I got this for you in the hopes of bringing back some fond memories.”

Kurt looks at his husband’s face, intrigued by his expression of sincerity and enthusiasm, but that could be a ruse. Kurt still finds it hard to read Sebastian sometimes, and Sebastian has a long history of giving gag gifts – which might explain why he wants Kurt to open this one early. It might not be child appropriate. Kurt holds the box to his ear and gives it a listen.

“If this is some kind of dead animal, I’m going to pinch you so hard.”

“Just open it,” Sebastian says, apparently deciding that pinching was a good idea and delivering one to Kurt’s side.

“Alright, alright, don’t get violent,” Kurt says, scooting out of the way of any more attacks. Kurt looks the box over. It’s wrapped in different paper – a blush pink paper that shimmers in the lights from the tree, and a big, puffy silver bow with curly ribbons spilling over the side. Kurt lifts the bow off carefully, not wanting to rip the lush paper underneath.

“Oh, here we go,” Sebastian says, taking Kurt’s glass of egg nog from where he set it down on the floor and sipping it while Kurt works through the tape with agonizing slowness. Sebastian finishes the glass of nog as Kurt finally relieves the box of its wrapping, folding the paper and putting it on the floor at his feet. The unwrapped box in his hands is a plain white cube, unmarked and unbranded, giving Kurt no clues as to the item hidden inside.

“What the…” Kurt mutters, opening the lid of the box and looking inside. He reaches in and pulls out a bottle of transparent gold-colored liquid. Kurt looks up at Sebastian, who has suddenly gone sober, looking at him expectantly, waiting for Kurt to react.

“Cologne?” Kurt asks, turning the bottle over in his hands, confused by the strange diamond cut of the glass, the bulb pump at the top, its distinctly feminine appearance. Kurt sees from the corner of his vision a smile bloom on Sebastian’s face – his signature one-sided smirk that usually accompanies his pranks and schemes. As Sebastian’s smirk grows, Kurt’s frown deepens until it sours his whole face.

“Perfume!?” Kurt snaps. “You bought me women’s perfume? Really mature, Smythe! I mean, didn’t we leave the princess jokes behind in high school?”

Sebastian shakes his head and sighs at the pigheadedness of Kurt Hummel. As Kurt’s tirade continues, Sebastian grabs the bottle along with Kurt’s arm. Kurt tries to pull his arm out of Sebastian’s grasp, but Sebastian pulls Kurt’s arm straight and sprays. As soon as the mist leaves the atomizer and hits the air, Kurt goes silent. Kurt takes a deep breath in through his nose, his eyes going cloudy as the scent starts to register. He pulls his arm out of Sebastian’s hand and lifts it to his nose, breathing in one more time.

“Did you…is that…” Kurt can’t stop the tears that gather in his eyes as he starts to remember. “That’s my…mother’s perfume.”

“A-ha,” Sebastian affirms with a nod, returning the bottle to Kurt when he reaches out a hand for it.

“But they discontinued it, not long after my mother died,” Kurt says, staring at the bottle in his hand, questioning his own eyes. “How did you ever find it?”

“Well, I contacted the company,” Sebastian starts, moving closer to his trembling husband, “but the only bottles of perfume they had in storage had turned, and the batch was ruined. So they directed me to a company that can recreate a scent if you happen to have a sample.”

Kurt looks into Sebastian’s eyes, bewilderment furrowing his brow, his fingers curling protectively around the bottle in his shaking hand.

“Where did you get a sample, though?” Kurt asks in a breathy voice, on the verge of tears.

Sebastian doesn’t answer. He reaches a hand beneath the sofa and pulls out another small box. He opens it for Kurt and the item he pulls out starts the tears in Kurt’s eyes rolling their way down his cheeks.

Kurt’s favorite ornament – his mother’s perfume bottle, hanging on a makeshift hanger that he had made the first Christmas after his mother died. Kurt gasps, taking the bottle gently from Sebastian’s hand.

“They took samples from inside the bottle,” Sebastian explains. “They swabbed it out, and they analyzed the air, I think. They wanted to crush the bottle and get a better sample, in case the perfume had seeped into the glass, but I wouldn’t let them. I couldn’t let them destroy your mother’s perfume bottle.”

Kurt looks from the empty bottle to the full one, opening his mouth to speak but finding it harder than it had been before when they were joking about wrapping paper and inappropriate present choices.

“But…how did you know?” Kurt asks.

Was it just a coincidence, or did his husband actually have a clue how much Kurt had been missing his mother’s smell?

Sebastian puts a comforting hand on Kurt’s knee, resting his forehead against Kurt’s so he can look in his husband’s eyes when he speaks.

“Last Christmas, when your father sent you your mother’s vanity, we put it in the bedroom and you wanted a moment alone…” Sebastian takes a pause when he hears Kurt sniffle, catching a few of Kurt’s tears on his finger. “I knew what you were doing. You told me how you used to open all the drawers so you could smell her again. But you came out a few minutes later, and you were so upset. You wouldn’t talk to me, you were short with Thomas, and I knew. I checked after you went out for your walk that evening. The vanity didn’t smell like anything. Just wood.” Sebastian looks up at the ceiling and laughs, pushing back his own urge to tear up. No need for the two of them to start crying.

“I...I can’t believe you did that,” Kurt says with joyful disbelief. “All of that. I just…”

“Yeah, well, I still have a mother,” Sebastian cuts in, saving Kurt from struggling to find the words to explain. “All you have is your memories and that smell, so I’m going to make sure you have it. Now, I know it might not smell _exactly_ the same, but…”

Kurt’s lips on Sebastian’s mouth cut his sentence short, his whole body shuddering as he cries against his husband’s lips.

“Thank you,” Kurt says. “Thank you so much.”

“You’re welcome, love,” Sebastian says, kissing his husband again, collecting Kurt’s bittersweet tears with lips pressed to his cheeks.

“But now I feel like a jerk,” Kurt says with a tearful laugh, breaking away to stand and put his mother’s perfume bottle on the tree, in the spot he left empty, hoping for its return, “since I didn’t give you a present yet.”

“Well…” Sebastian says, coming up behind Kurt and wrapping his arms around Kurt’s waist, “if I remember correctly, holiday head is still on the table.”

“After a beautiful gift like the one you gave me, I think I’d rather make love to you,” Kurt says, turning his head to capture Sebastian’s lips again. “But then I’ll get two presents, and you’ll only have one.”

“Just don’t cum then,” Sebastian says, taking Kurt’s arm and leading him away, “and we’ll call it even.”


	15. An Only Child

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kurt and Sebastian are talking about adopting another child, when Thomas overhears and misunderstands, thinking they want a new child to replace him.
> 
> Warning for anxiety.

Kurt smiles when he sees Sebastian enter the kitchen and take a seat on a stool by the kitchen island.

“How is the little guy?” Kurt asks, pulling down a bag of coffee beans, getting ready for a late night caffeine fix.

“Fast asleep,” Sebastian says with a tired smile – an indicator that their little man did not go down without a fight.

“How many this time?” Kurt asks, grabbing two mugs.

“Seven,” Sebastian sighs, picking up his neglected newspaper, which he had meant to read over breakfast this morning, and dividing up the sections. Kurt watches him from the corner of his eye. Sebastian’s systematic way of reading the paper was just one of his little quirks that Kurt had discovered, and grown to love.

“That’s two more than last night,” Kurt chuckles, and Sebastian rolls his eyes.

“Yup. If we keep going this way, we’ll be up to fifteen books by Friday, and I don’t know how much more of the Samurai Rangers I can stand.”

Kurt chuckles while the seed of a thought bounces around his head. He opens a drawer and takes out two spoons while he considers it.

“Did you hear that Wes and Cynthia are trying for a third?” Kurt asks his husband, rummaging through the cabinet for the coffee grinder.

“A third what?” Sebastian asks, flipping through the paper, looking for the sports section.

Kurt raises an eyebrow and shakes his head.

“A third baby, meerkat,” Kurt laughs, pulling down the wayward appliance and sets it up on the counter.

“I didn’t realize they had _two_ baby meerkats,” Sebastian smirks, not looking up from his paper, “not to mention wanting to acquire a third.”

Kurt throws a coffee bean at Sebastian’s head and snickers when it lodges itself firmly into the wave of his upswept bangs. Sebastian’s unamused eyes peek up from over the edge of his paper and Kurt laughs, snickering as Sebastian reaches up a hand in search of it.

“Do you ever think about it?” Sebastian asks, locating the bean, plucking it out, and flicking it back at his husband. Kurt dodges the small, poorly aimed projectile with ease, trying to snuff out his remaining chuckles before he accidentally wakes up their son.

“Think about what?” Kurt asks, measuring out the coffee beans and pouring them into the grinder.

“You know…” Sebastian looks over his shoulder to make sure that no tiny ears are listening in. “Do you ever think about having another kid? Maybe one of our own?”

Kurt puts down the bag of coffee beans and cocks his head.

“N…” he starts automatically, but then he clamps his mouth shut. He rolls his eyes up toward the ceiling and leans his hip against the counter, contemplating his knee-jerk answer. “Well, to be completely honest, I did think about it in the beginning.”

“That’s what I thought,” Sebastian says, sounding slightly proud of himself for knowing his husband.

“Did you now?” Kurt asks rhetorically, returning his attention to pulverizing the coffee beans.

“Well, you’re kind of an open book,” Sebastian says superiorly.

Kurt stops the grinder and throws him a look.

“Literally,” Sebastian says, ready to defend himself from any more flying beans coming his way. “I mean, you scrapbook.”

Kurt doesn’t offer a response, opening the lid to the machine and preparing to move the French roast grinds to the coffee press, his cheeks pinking as he works. He had forgotten all about those scrapbooks – book after book of his hopes and dreams that he’d been putting together for as long as he could remember. There was one for his dream college, one for his dream job, one for his dream wedding…and another about the child he wanted so badly. He knows they’re still hanging around somewhere – he doesn’t let go of anything – but he never thought that Sebastian would have looked through them.

“And now?” Sebastian asks, yanking Kurt out of his thoughts and back to the conversation.

“Nope,” Kurt says without reservation. “I mean, you know what the counselor said about Thomas and his anxiety issues.”

“I know what the counselor said,” Sebastian says, rolling his eyes. “I was there, remember?”

“Yeah, I remember,” Kurt laughs, remembering how nervous Sebastian was during that meeting. When they started the process to become foster parents, Sebastian was still his signature cocky, smart-ass self, but by the third interview - after the third authority figure scrutinized their home, their lives, their finances - some of that snark had worn off and Sebastian knocked down a few pegs.

By that point, he didn’t care who he had grovel to. He just wanted a child.

Kurt sighs. He might as well tell him. Sebastian probably already knows, and besides, there’s no harm in daydreaming.

“I always imagined I’d have a little girl,” Kurt says, staring dreamily over Sebastian’s head.

“Really?” Sebastian asks, resting his chin in the palm of his head, arm propped against the counter he’s sitting beside.

“Yeah,” Kurt says, eyes returning to his husband’s face. “I could picture her in my mind, too – big blue eyes, curly brown hair…kind of like my mom as a girl, I guess.” Kurt returns his eyes to the coffee press, Sebastian suspects to hide a tear or two that he doesn’t want his husband to see. Sebastian doesn’t comment on it. He lets Kurt have his moment. “What about you?” Kurt asks with a sniffle. “If you could handpick a child, what would you…”

Kurt’s question is cut off by the sound of a tired, muffled gasp somewhere behind Sebastian. Sebastian turns quickly and Kurt rushes to his side, both men already knowing where the sound came from.

Kurt sees his son, and his heart cracks.

The little boy in Spiderman pajamas, still drowsy from sleep, bursts into tears and races away back to his room, the sound of sobs and the patter of tiny footsteps echoing in his wake.

“Oh no,” Kurt says, starting to follow. “What did he hear? Do you think he heard everything? You know what his counselor said about his abandonment issues! If he thinks…”

“Shhh,” Sebastian says, grabbing Kurt’s arms before he can take off after their son. “It’s going to be fine. Let me field this one…alright?” Kurt starts to shake his head no, but then silently relents. It won’t be any use him trying to console their son if he can’t stop himself crying. Sebastian brushes a tear off Kurt’s cheek and pecks him on the lips before leaving him in the kitchen to finish with the coffee.

Sebastian follows the sound of sobs down the hall to Thomas’s room, wondering for a second what happened to his life. As a young man, he never pictured himself with a husband or a son. If someone had told him as a freshman in high school that he would get married after college, settle down, have a child, and be insanely happy giving up clubbing and partying for things like recorder recitals and PTA meetings, he would have thought they were mad. But here he is, walking down the hallway of the suburban home that he co-owns – a hallway covered in framed photos of the family he helped create - about to comfort a little boy in Spiderman pajamas.

Funny what happens to your life when you leave high school behind and finally grow the fuck up.

Sebastian stops at the only door with a Power Rangers poster taped to the outside and knocks, creeping the partially cracked door open slowly to let himself inside.

“Tom-Tom?” he calls out softly, his attention directed to the large lump huddled beneath the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comforter – a lump much too large to be just one small boy. Thomas’s Labradoodle Hepburn must have climbed beneath the covers with him, to comforting his distraught charge. “Tom-Tom? Come out and talk to me, please.”

Sebastian hears a whimper, but no coherent words, and then more sobbing.

“Oh, Tom-Tom. Buddy…” Sebastian sits on the edge of the bed, feeling around first to make sure he doesn’t squish any hands or arms or paws. “What’s the matter? Why are you crying?”

Sebastian hears nothing but hushed crying for a moment, then the lump under the blanket moves, and a scrunched face peeks out from beneath.

“You…you guys don’t want me,” Thomas says, his face crumbling after. “You’re going to…you’re going to trade me for another kid. For a little girl, like Papa always wanted.”

“Tom-Tom,” Sebastian says, rubbing a soothing hand up and down his son’s trembling back, “you were listening to _tall talk_. You know you’re not supposed to do that.”

“B-but it’s…but it’s true,” Thomas stutters, his face red and puffy with tears. “Papa…Papa wants a girl. You don’t want me anymore.”

“Thomas,” Sebastian says, in a more firm tone than he normally uses with his son, “have Papa or I ever told you that we don’t love you, or that we don’t want you anymore?”

Thomas sniffles, looking up into his father’s eyes, thinking back carefully on all the time they’ve spent together as a family, even though the answer is pretty simple.

“No,” Thomas answers. “No, you’ve never said that.”

“That’s right,” Sebastian says, reaching beneath the comforter and pulling the little boy out. He sets Thomas on his lap and hugs him tight. “We’ve never said it because we love you, Tom-Tom.” Sebastian sighs, dropping a kiss into the mess of Thomas’s hair. “You know, you didn’t catch the beginning of that conversation. The part where your Papa said he didn’t want anyone but you.”

“Really?” Thomas asks, looking into his father’s face to double-check that his father isn’t lying to him.

“Really,” Sebastian assures him, kissing his son on the forehead, then the cheeks, then attacking him with zerberts until he starts laughing. “You know, believe it or not, your Papa and I had a life of our own before you came along. There were things we wanted and things that we thought we would do.”

“Did any of those things happen?” Thomas asks, relaxing in Sebastian’s arms and starting to yawn.

“A lot of them did,” Sebastian says, picking Thomas up and carrying him to the head of his bed. “A lot of them won’t happen, and a lot of them will, but haven’t happened yet.” Sebastian tucks Thomas beneath his comforter and Hepburn, who had already crawled out from beneath the blankets and was waiting patiently by the side of the bed, leaps up to take his place beside Thomas. “Someday, when we’re all ready, we might adopt another little boy or girl. We might not.” Sebastian shrugs. “But no matter what your Papa and I do, we will never, ever give up loving you.”

Thomas smiles and nods and yawns again, thinking over what his father said.

“It might be nice to have a little brother or sister someday,” Thomas admits, kicking his legs beneath his blankets, “you know, to play with and teach stuff to.”

“That’s the spirit, kiddo,” Sebastian says, ruffling his son’s hair.

After another yawn, Thomas’s sweet smile grows to a huge, calculating grin that encompasses his entire face.

“And someone to blame stuff on so I don’t get in trouble.”

“There you go,” Sebastian says, assaulting the boy with tickles and hugging him tight. “Now, why don’t you keep thinking about that and get your butt back to sleep? We’ll talk about this more later.”

“Alright, daddy,” Thomas says, kissing Sebastian on the cheek. “Good-night.”

“Good-night, Tom-Tom.”

Sebastian offers Hepburn a scratch on the head and a “Good boy”, then backs out of the room. Sebastian watches Thomas turn to his side and throw an arm around the dog, who lowers his head to the pillow to keep watch over the boy till he falls asleep. Sebastian opens the door to Thomas’s room carefully, knowing what’s going to meet him on the other side. He takes a step out and closes the door, keeping it open just a hair. He indulges in a deep, tension-releasing breath, sliding down the frame to sit on the floor beside his husband. Kurt loops an arm under Sebastian’s and pulls him close, resting his head on Sebastian’s shoulder and sighing a relieved, contented sigh.

“That was so sweet what you told him,” Kurt says, snuggling closer.

“I told you I could handle it, babe,” Sebastian says, kissing his husband on the head much the same way he had kissed his son. “I’ve kind of been in his shoes once before.”

“That’s right,” Kurt says, forgetting for a second that his husband has a younger brother. “Is that what your parents told you when your brother was born?”

Kurt peeks up at his husband’s face and watches Sebastian’s smile unexpectedly drift away.

“No,” Sebastian says in a hard voice. “No, my parents told me that my brother was their second chance...”

Sebastian’s sentence peters off; Kurt’s brow furrows while he considers his husband’s comment.

“A second chance?” Kurt asks, confused. “A second chance at wh– oh, Sebastian…honey. I’m so sorry.” Kurt had met Sebastian’s parents on several occasions. They weren’t exactly warm or affectionate people, but that...that was just cruel.

Sebastian shrugs, tugging Kurt to sit between his legs and wrapping his arms tighter around him.

“Don’t sweat it, babe,” he says, resting his chin on Kurt’s shoulder. “I don’t need them. I’ve got my own family…” Sebastian leans his head to talk closer to Kurt’s ear, “and I wouldn’t trade you guys for anything.”


	16. Counterfeit Pumpkins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sebastian and Thomas come home, excited to get started carving pumpkins for Halloween...until they see the pumpkins Kurt bought.
> 
> Written for the Kurtoberfest prompt 'pumpkins'. Mostly fluff and humor with a hint of anxiety on Thomas's part, but with a surprise guest at the end to make up for it :)

“Pump-kins! Pump-kins! Pump-kins!” Sebastian chants along with his son, Thomas, as they leap from Sebastian’s SUV and head for the house.

“What do we want?” Sebastian yells, racing to the door first and unlocking it before Thomas and his Labradoodle can run headlong into it…again.

“Pumpkins!” Thomas yells.

“When do we want them?” Sebastian flings the door open wide.

“Now!” Thomas cheers, leaping in the air with a hand raised to give his father a high five.

“So, are you guys ready to carve some pumpkins?” Kurt calls to his husband and son, who he can hear racing his way.

“Yeah!” they cheer. Sebastian tickles Thomas to make him go faster, looking just as excited as the wiggling little boy as they both stampede into the kitchen.

But they skid to a stop in the doorway, nearly falling over themselves when they see what’s waiting for them. Four smaller-than-average pumpkins sit on the kitchen island, each the same size, the same shape, obviously faux. Sebastian raises a shaking finger and points at Kurt’s blasphemous offering.

“What…are _those_?”

“They are” - Kurt picks one up and carries it over to his boys, who both take a simultaneous step away - “craft pumpkins.”

“Wh-what does that mean, exactly?” Sebastian asks. “Craft pumpkins? What kind of awful witchcraft is that?”

“It means…” Kurt says, indulging for a moment in chasing Sebastian and Thomas around the kitchen, brandishing one of his craft pumpkins before returning it to the counter, “no stringy pumpkin guts staining Thomas’s clothes. No gunge under our fingernails for weeks. No finding cold pumpkin under our butts when we sit on the breakfast stools, even though I’ve gone over this place about three dozen times with Formula 409. No muss, no fuss, and most importantly, no _mess_.” Kurt’s eyes glance to the clock on the wall. “Not when my dad and Carole are going to be here any minute.”

Sebastian looks down at Thomas, who gazes up at him in anguish.

“But, what about toasting pumpkin seeds?” Thomas asks miserably.

“I bought a pound of pumpkin seeds from Sprouts on the way home,” Kurt says. “So we’re still toasting seeds.”

“And…what about your _pies_?” Sebastian asks, sounding even more miserable than Thomas. “Your famous Kurt Hummel-Smythe Pumpkin Pies?”

“I got some pie pumpkins at Sprouts, too.” Kurt giggles. “No worries. Do you think my dad and Carole would even walk through the front door if I didn’t have pumpkin pie in the house?”

“Okay,” Sebastian says, “well, what about that yummy pumpkin smell?”

“Yeah,” Thomas agrees.

“I already thought about that…” Kurt walks over to one of the cupboards. He opens a cabinet and takes out a brand new Glade Holiday Scents candle. While Thomas and Sebastian watch in horror, Kurt tears off the cardboard, lights a match, and then lights the candle. He walks with it around the room, spreading the aroma of fake pumpkin in the air before putting the candle carefully on the kitchen table, waving at it lightly so the scent travels into the living room. “Voila!”

“I don’t…I don’t believe this!” Thomas whines, burying his head into the back of his father’s knee. “It’s like a bad dream!”

“Please tell me you’re kidding,” Sebastian says, contorting slightly to put an arm around his distraught son’s shoulders. “Please tell me that there are a row of giant pumpkins in the back yard, and that this is just another one of those sick, sick ways you get your jollies at my expense.”

“What?” Kurt says, genuinely hurt when he realizes his husband and son might not be joking. “No, Bas. Now, come on. This won’t be so bad.”

“No,” Sebastian says, shaking his head and pointing at the imposter pumpkins on the island. “This…this goes _beyond_ bad. This is awful!”

“Yeah,” Thomas’s muffled voice concurs.

“I mean, what’s going to be next, Kurt?” Sebastian asks. “Soy candy canes on the tree at Christmas? Styrofoam eggs at Easter? Near beer on St. Patty’s Day?”

“Sebastian…” Kurt speaks right as the doorbell rings. He looks toward the door, but Sebastian puts a hand up to block him.

“No,” he says. “Tom-Tom and I will answer the door. You stay here with your…your… _craft_ pumpkins and your _fake_ pumpkin smell candle, and you think about what you’ve done.” Sebastian pats Thomas on the head. “Come along, Thomas. Your Papa has some important thinking to do.”

“Oh, give me a break,” Kurt says as Sebastian walks off through the living room to the front door with Thomas attached to one leg. Kurt leans against the frame and watches Sebastian open the front door, eager to hear just how Sebastian intends to complain to his father-in-law about the horrible pumpkins Kurt bought and how he ruined Halloween. If Kurt knows his father, all Burt’s going to care about is if there’s going to be pie and when.

The door swings open and a second later Thomas bolts out, whooping and hollering.

“Oh, thank you, Grandpa! Grandma! Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

“What the…” Kurt leaves the kitchen doorway and heads for the front door, but he can see them in the front yard even before he gets there – six of the biggest, misshapen, off-color, knobby, and grotesque gourds Kurt has ever laid his eyes on. And there, in the middle of them, are his father and Carole, armed with pumpkin cutters, already sawing out the tops to two of the largest, one of them so big that when he’s done yanking out the cap, Burt picks Thomas up and plops him inside before Kurt can even think to stop him.

“What…the heck…are those?” Kurt asks, staring in disgust at the orange monstrosities blighting his freshly raked lawn.

“Those, my love,” Sebastian says, as giddy as Thomas, “are pumpkins! Actual real live pumpkins.”

“Big Macs to be exact,” Burt adds, waving to his sons from the yard. “Hey, kiddo. Carole told me about your craft pumpkin idea, so I thought I’d lend you a hand.”

Carole quickly adverts her gaze from Kurt’s shocked face, biting her lower lip, her cheeks turning a deep cherry red.

“Hey, Sebastian,” she says, “why don’t you come help me with this one down here on the end? You know, the one out of throwing distance of the front door?”

“So…he finds out about my craft pumpkins,” Kurt says, “and brings over _these_ disgusting things?”

“Yup,” Sebastian says, slapping Kurt on the shoulder, “and that is why Burt Hummel is the _greatest father-in-law that ever lived_!”

 

 


	17. Midnight Lights

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sebastian and Kurt take their son for a drive late at night to look at the decorations on the houses in the neighborhood.
> 
> Written for the Hummel Holidays prompts 'lights' and 'decorations'

“How about this one?”

Sebastian pulls the SUV to the curb. Before it stops rolling, his husband and son press their noses to the windows, _ooh’ing_ and _aah’ing_ at the exquisitely decorated house across the street.

“Oh…my… _gosh_!” Thomas says, tugging gently on Hepburn’s collar so that the Labradoodle will look out the window with him at the three-floor house, lit from foundation to roof with strings of multi-color twinkle lights, the front yard festooned with animatronic elves, wire-frame reindeer poised as if they were leaping into flight, penguins ice skating, pandas in Santa hats throwing snow balls, and Thomas’s favorite, candy cane lights – “Not because they do anything,” he explained at the beginning of the night, “but because they just look _so_ delicious!”

“Ooo, ooo, ooo! Papa! Daddy! This one! This one’s my favorite!” he declares, bouncing on the back seat in his sugar free hot chocolate and candy cane fueled excitement.

“You’ve said that about the last seven houses!” Kurt chuckles.

“Well, that’s because they’re all my favorites!” Thomas says, struggling to hide a yawn, knowing what it’ll mean if his dads see. But Kurt does see, and he taps Sebastian on the shoulder in wordless comment.

“Okay, little man,” Sebastian says, “just a few more houses, then we’re gonna pack it in.”

“No!” Thomas whines, another yawn passing his lips along with his complaint. “But, there’s a whole bunch more!”

“And we can see them tomorrow night, love,” Kurt says. “It’s after midnight.”

“But…but I’m not sleepy,” Thomas insists, looping his arms around his dog’s neck and snuggling into his fur.

“Sure you’re not,” Sebastian says, smirking at Thomas through the rear view mirror. The little boy, partially lost behind the body of his companion animal, fights with all his might to keep one eye open, cocking his eyebrow high in the hopes that it will raise his eyelid with it. Sebastian turns down the next street, creeping behind other cars prowling the neighborhood, looking at the elaborately decorated houses. The houses get larger and brighter as they approach the end of the cul de sac, each owner trying to outdo their neighbor by covering every inch of their property until there isn’t a speck of space left. One even has the walkway and driveway filled with the largest collection of Santas Kurt has ever seen, and Kurt wonders how they leave their house.

“Wow,” Kurt says in lieu of his exhausted son. “That’s just…amazing.”

“Yeah,” Sebastian agrees, “but you know which one I like the best?”

“Which one?” Kurt asks, turning to face him. His husband has been remarkably stoic for the majority of the drive. Kurt can’t begin to guess.

“Why don’t I show you?” Sebastian says.

Kurt curls up in the front seat, beneath the cover of Sebastian’s cashmere coat, and Sebastian turns up the heater. He drives slowly, following the line of cars around, and before they make it out of the gated community, both Thomas and Kurt fall asleep, snoring softly. Kurt had started dreaming of last Christmas, when his father and Carole came to visit, bringing with him the loudest, most obnoxious present Thomas got that year, when a hand on his knee shakes him awake.

“We’re here,” Sebastian whispers.

Kurt sits up, his body heavy with sleep and the heat in the vehicle, his eyes sticky as he blinks them open. He pulls himself awake as quickly as he can, curious to see which of the twenty-two houses they saw on that night’s tour was his husband’s favorite. But when he sees the house they’ve pulled up to, Kurt’s brow wrinkles.

“Bas” - Kurt eyes his husband - “that’s _our_ house.”

“A-ha,” Sebastian agrees, a smug-ish grin on his lips, his eyes practically glued to their little abode – a rather humble house considering Sebastian and Kurt’s combined fiscal worth. But they had decided when they got married, knowing for certain that they’d want a child someday, to buy the nicest house in the nicest, non-gated, suburban neighborhood, and live as close to normal lives as they could.

“But” – Kurt looks from his husband’s eyes to their home – “we haven’t even decorated yet.”

“I know,” Sebastian says and shrugs. “Doesn’t matter. This is the one I like the best.”

“You know, I’ve seen pictures of you celebrating Christmas as a kid,” Kurt teases. “Your parents went all out - lights on everything, garland on the walls, poinsettias, tinsel. You even had, what was it, _seven_ Christmas trees?”

“Yeah, which I wasn’t allowed to touch, or decorate, or…or anything,” Sebastian says sadly. “But it doesn’t matter now. I wouldn’t care if we had ten lights on our house, or ten thousand. I’ll always love this house best. And do you want to know why?”

“Why?”

Sebastian turns to Kurt and smiles.

“Because it has you in it.” Sebastian says. “And Thomas.”

Kurt watches his husband’s expression change, a bit softer and a lot more sentimental than he’s seen from Sebastian in a while. Kurt loves these moments, when his husband’s less guarded, more vulnerable.

“You know,” Kurt says, leaning to his left to get closer to his husband, “you’re a big corny dork.”

“Yeah, well,” Sebastian says, grabbing Kurt’s bicep with his right hand and pulling him in for a kiss, “I’m _your_ big corny dork.”


	18. The Best Worst Tradition

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kurt doesn’t know when it became tradition that Sebastian gets to be the fun dad, but he doesn’t necessarily have to like it.
> 
> Written for the Hummel Holidays prompt ‘traditions’.

Kurt doesn’t know when it became a tradition, but the first time it happened, he was determined not to like it – his husband and son falling asleep on the sofa after making an epic, whirlwind mess trimming the Christmas tree. Boxes were left open and scattered around; old ornament hangers stuck up from the rug like dead roots, poking at the bottom of Kurt’s foot as he walked, no matter how many times he’d thought he’d gotten them all; and silver strands of tinsel hung off almost everything _except_ the tree. But when the dust of his own irritated grumbling settled and he took a moment to look at his two miscreants, cuddled together, Thomas underneath Sebastian’s arm with Sebastian stretched out on the couch, taking up every conceivable inch of space, Kurt had to admit they were adorable.

Honestly, seeing them like that made Kurt kind of jealous. Kurt’s the disciplinarian. _He_ lays down the law, and _he_ makes up the bulk of the rules and decides the punishments. Sebastian gets to be _the_ _fun dad_. He’s the one that jumps headlong into piles of leaves without worrying about grass stains or contusions. He’s the one who brings home ice-cream cake for dinner _just because_ , or wakes them all up at midnight on a school night to go for a drive through the first falling snow. He’s the one who persisted with the idea of getting Thomas a companion animal when Kurt’s first three opinions on the subject were no, no, and no. Kurt’s one attempt at spontaneity – a Happy Meal picnic in the front yard – was called on account of a freak, unexpected rainstorm. And Sebastian came to the rescue by constructing a make-shift tent for them to sit under so they could watch the downpour while they ate, in opposition to Kurt’s suggestion that they eat indoors in case lightning started, and to keep Thomas from catching a cold…which he did.

But it _was_ a great picnic. Thomas still talks about it.

Kurt’s insistence on rules and order are the boundaries within which Sebastian feels free to run amuck, and Kurt was afraid that he might start resenting Sebastian for it…until Kurt realized that this relationship Sebastian has with their son doesn’t take anything away from Kurt. It’s simply the way they communicate, thru the complicated linguistics of tickle fights, crude jokes, and laughing till one of them snorts milk out their nose.

This is a language Kurt doesn’t know how to speak as well, but his role in the family dynamic has always been clearly defined, since day one.

When Thomas falls down and scrapes his knee, he goes to Kurt.

When his stomach hurts and he feels nauseous, he goes to Kurt.

When he has a nightmare and he can’t go back to sleep, he goes to Kurt.

When he needs advice about something in school, or he needs help with his homework, or he’s worried about Hepburn, he goes to Kurt.

And that job is as important as always being _the fun dad_.

In fact, Kurt knows that Sebastian wants just once to be the one Thomas runs to when he has a splinter, or he sprains an ankle, or when someone at school calls him a name.

Kurt and Sebastian sometimes joke that they are the equivalent of a _completely in love but divorced married couple_ – Kurt gets Thomas on the day to day, and Sebastian gets evenings and weekends. But holidays are Sebastian’s time to shine. He looks forward to them for months. It’s his and Thom’s time to bend the rules (with Kurt’s permission, even though it also comes with a dose of disapproval), watch cartoon movies until sunrise, spend all day in their pajamas, eat cookie dough out of the roll, wrestle on the front lawn, and all of the other things Kurt normally rallies against.

It’s a tradition that Sebastian gets to be _the fun dad_.

And Kurt will let him keep it.


	19. Shoo-Shoo Bread

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While Kurt tries his best to put together gingerbread houses for a school bake sale, Sebastian gets on Kurt's nerves by singing his own repetitive, obnoxious version of a Christmas carol.
> 
> Written for the Hummel Holidays prompts 'baking' and 'gingerbread', and dedicated to my husband (he knows why xD)

_“Shoo-shoo bread, shoo-shoo bread, gonna make some shoo-shoo bread…Shoo-shoo bread, shoo-shoo bread, gonna make some shoo-shoo bread…”_

Making gingerbread houses for Thomas’s school’s Christmas Cake Walk is simultaneously one of Kurt’s most favorite and least favorite things they do around the holidays. Kurt loves it because he gets to break out his mother’s gingerbread recipe, and the warm smell of ginger and spice filling the kitchen never fails to bring back memories of her.

But Kurt hates it because of that stupid, frickin’ song.

Sebastian conjured that song up years ago when Kurt first shared this tradition of making gingerbread with him. Sebastian had been hitting the egg nog a little too hard, slurring his words, giggling after every one, and thus the term _shoo-shoo bread_ was born.

It tickled Sebastian on some sadistic level, so that even after he sobered up, he wouldn’t stop using it.

Kurt tries to ignore Sebastian’s incessant singing, but his husband seems obsessed with making sure Kurt hears. When Kurt crosses from one end of the kitchen to the other, Sebastian follows. When Kurt puts on the food processor and the blender, Sebastian sings over them. When Kurt turns on Pandora for some traditional holiday music, Sebastian sings along, changing the words to accommodate his obnoxious ditty.

Sebastian even managed to recruit Thomas into his fun, so should Sebastian meet with some sort of untimely gingerbread-baking accident, his son will carry on the legacy.

_“Shoo-shoo bread, shoo-shoo bread, gonna make some shoo-shoo bread…Shoo-shoo bread, shoo-shoo bread, gonna make some shoo-shoo bread…”_

But Kurt’s not having it today. As always, when it comes to volunteering and baking matters, factors beyond Kurt’s control have conspired to put him behind. This time, a combination of one mother’s twins being delivered early, one family unexpectedly going to Vail for the holidays, and Sebastian’s inability to keep his mouth shut whenever someone mentions a bake sale has saddled Kurt with the creation of twice as many gingerbread houses and families this year as last year…and last year, Kurt was cutting it close.

He might have a chance at getting it done. He planned to the second, prepared down to the last red licorice whip necktie. He might actually be able to pull through and be the hero of the Kaplan School’s Christmas Carnival Annual Cake Walk and Fundraiser…if Sebastian could just stop singing that goddamned song!

_“Shoo-shoo bread, shoo-shoo bread, gonna make some shoo-shoo bread…Shoo-shoo bread, shoo-shoo bread, gonna make some shoo-shoo bread…”_

Kurt puts down his pastry bag and takes a deep, calming breath. He’s beginning to think that Scrooge had the right idea with the whole “boiled in his own pudding” thing.

“Hey, Sebastian,” Kurt says, trying to figure out a way of stopping Sebastian without resorting to homicide, “I think I’m running out of red gumdrops and royal icing. Would you mind going to pick some up for me?”

“Sure, babe,” Sebastian says, still humming the tune to his song behind his words. “I’m picking little man up in thirty. I’ll go then. Okay?”

“Yeah,” Kurt says with a nod and a tight smile. “Sure.”

_“Shoo-shoo bread, shoo-shoo bread, gonna make some shoo-shoo bread…Shoo-shoo bread, shoo-shoo bread, gonna make some shoo-shoo bread…”_

“Hey, Seb, could you order us a pizza for tonight? After all this _gingerbread_ , I don’t feel like cooking.”

“Sure, babe,” Sebastian says with genuinely played shock. “Wow. Pizza on a Tuesday. Circle this day in red.”

“Yes, I know” – Kurt laughs – “now order the damn pizza.”

“Alright, alright,” Sebastian chuckles, pulling out his iPhone. “My man wants his pizza,” he mutters while he dials. “Don’t get in his way.”

Kurt breathes in deep and prepares to relax, knowing that a break from the irritating caroling is at hand once Sebastian calls the pizzeria, but five minutes later, the singing hasn’t stopped, and Kurt’s grip on his sanity is loosening.

_“Shoo-shoo bread, shoo-shoo bread, gonna make some shoo-shoo bread…Shoo-shoo bread, shoo-shoo bread, gonna make some shoo-shoo bread…”_

“Sebastian,” Kurt says with forced sweetness, “aren’t you going to order dinner?”

“I just did,” Sebastian says, taking a tray of gingerbread children out of the oven.

“Well, I didn’t hear you call.”

“I didn’t _call_. They have an app for that.”

“Oh,” Kurt grumbles, going back to putting Red Hot buttons on the vests of his gingerbread men, “great. That’s just…that’s just _great_.”

_“Shoo-shoo bread, shoo-shoo bread, gonna make some shoo-shoo bread…Shoo-shoo bread, shoo-shoo bread, gonna make some shoo-shoo bread…”_

Kurt gets the gingerbread families done, but the more Sebastian sings, the more Kurt’s gingerbread houses suffer.

He can’t ice any trim because his hand won’t stop shaking.

His nerves on edge, he doesn’t have the patience to finish the candied roses for the flower boxes.

He’s been stress eating gumdrops for the last fifteen minutes.

When Sebastian takes Kurt’s hand and spins him, dipping him low and going into a slow, heartfelt rendition of, _“Shoo-shoo bread, shoo-shoo bread, gonna make some shoo-shoo bread…”_ Kurt snaps.

“Jesus---why!?” he screams, struggling to stand up and pull himself out of Sebastian’s grasp. “Why, why, why do you _do_ that!?”

“Why do I do _what_?” Sebastian asks innocently, grabbing one of the cookies off a plate of _imperfects_ and taking a nibble.

“It’s _gingerbread_!” Kurt yells, feeling free to express his frustration thoroughly since Thomas is at school and won’t witness Kurt lose his temper. “Ginger…bread! Gingerbread. Not _shoo-shoo_ bread. Why do you keep calling it shoo-shoo bread?”

“Well” – Sebastian swallows – “remember the first time I sang you this song?”

“Yeah,” Kurt says, “and I remember telling you how much I hated it.”

“Yup,” Sebastian agrees.

Kurt watches Sebastian nibble his cookie, waiting for a more in depth explanation, but he doesn’t get one, and that pisses Kurt off more than all thirty-seven rounds of that shoo-shoo bread song.

“That’s why?” Kurt realizes. “That’s the reason? Because it bugs me?”

Sebastian shrugs. “Do you know of a better reason?”

“Ugh.” Kurt throws down his dish towel and takes off his apron. “I’m out. I’m gone. I can’t be in the same room with you and knives.”

“Where you going, Kurt?” Sebastian asks, unable to contain his grin. “You have about nine _shoo-shoo_ bread houses to go.”

“I’m going to go get our son and call a divorce lawyer.” Kurt grabs the keys to his car and heads for the front door. “You can finish up the _shoo-shoo_ bread by yourself.”

“But, Kurt!” Sebastian follows after him with a plate of cookies in his hands. “Think about the children.”

“I think Thomas will understand in time.”

“No, Kurt!” Sebastian hurries after Kurt with the plate, cooling gingerbread boys and girls placed around the edge in a circle. “The shoo-shoo bread children! They want to love you, Kurt! Please, let them love you!”


	20. Waiting for Santa

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kurt and Sebastian are lying under their Christmas tree with their son, waiting for him to fall asleep - Kurt, in the hopes that he can get the rest of their Christmas preparations finished before the big morning, and Sebastian, in the hopes that he gets to "finish" with his husband. (Timeline wise, kind of a jump backwards to their first Christmas with Thomas.)
> 
> Written for the Hummel Holidays Drabble prompt 'Christmas Eve', and inspired by the OTP Prompt - http://otpprompts.tumblr.com/post/135953721098/imagine-your-otp-sleeping-in-a-giant-nest-of

Sebastian shifts on his numb hip, batting a hand behind his kinked spine to dislodge a rock-hard, package, the corner of which keeps digging into the small of his back.

“I can’t… _urgh_ …believe… _Jesus Christ_ …we’re going to sleep under this Christmas tree all night,” he complains in a not-too-subtle whisper.

“Shhh,” Kurt hisses, scooting three inches to his left on his own numb hip when he finds himself in a similar predicament as his husband. “We’re not. We’re just going to wait until I’m sure he’s passed out, and then carry him to his room.”

“Well, when’s that going to be?” Sebastian groans, propping up on one elbow and smacking his forehead into a red glass ornament, almost knocking it off its branch.

“He just started snoring about five minutes ago,” Kurt says, “so I’d say let’s give him five more minutes.”

“Good,” Sebastian sighs, giving up on the present menacing him and yielding to another five minutes of discomfort, “because I’m really looking forward to getting our Christmas Eve nookie on.”

Sebastian winks, but Kurt stares at him, shaking his head slowly in disgust.

“Uh, no,” Kurt says. “We are not doing that. It’s Christmas Eve.”

“O-kay, that is literally the strangest thing you have ever said to me,” Sebastian says. “Why would it being Christmas Eve keep us from having lots of dirty, sordid sex?”

“Shhh!” Kurt shushes unnecessarily. “Don’t say that! You don’t know if he’s fully asleep or not.”

“He is,” Sebastian counters, covertly peeking at his son’s face to make sure. “Yeah, he’s asleep.”

“You don’t know.” Kurt puts a cupped hand over the boy’s ear to block their conversation. “What if he’s at that midpoint between asleep and awake, where he can still here what’s going on? What if what you just said is now lingering in his subconscious, waiting until he hits REM sleep, and it gives him nightmares?”

“What are you even talking about?” Sebastian scoffs.

“It happened to me once, on a road trip I took with my dad to Illinois. He didn’t notice me falling asleep in the passenger seat. He started talking about stopping at a gas station for chips, and asked me if I wanted something to drink. The next thing I knew, I was trapped in a cooler, and Kool-Aid Man was trying to drown me inside his bulbous pitcher belly.”

This time Sebastian stares, jaw dropped.

“You know what? I was entirely wrong before,” Sebastian says. “ _That_ is the strangest thing you have ever said to me.”

“Whatever. I’m not taking any chances.”

“Well, in that case, why don’t we just stay down here all effin’ night, stuck under this tree? I doubt I could stand up again if I wanted to anyhow.”

“Because you’ve still got a bicycle to put together,” Kurt says, inching his way out from his cramped spot beside his son and husband, “and I’ve got about eighty more presents to wrap before the family comes over tomorrow.”

“Wow,” Sebastian says, following his husband, carefully sliding across the floor, his back cramping and his hips sore, “that sounds like it’s going to be a pain in the ass. I think I got off easy with the bike.”

“Yeah, well, I looked over the instructions for that bike” – Kurt lets out a groan, rising to his feet, stretching his back and getting reacquainted with his limbs – “I’d say you might be screwed, too, and that’s coming from someone who used to rebuild engines in his dad’s shop.”

“Look” – Sebastian takes Kurt’s right arm, massaging it gently while he speaks – “you’ve put so much work into this Christmas, making sure everything’s perfect for Thomas, and you’ve done an incredible job.”

Kurt watches his husband move on to his left arm, giving it the same attention, floored by his sudden and unsolicited praise.

“Thank you,” Kurt says, curling into his husband’s arms. “I didn’t think that you noticed.”

“I did.” Sebastian hugs Kurt close, kissing his forehead. “And it sounds like it’s going to be a long night for both of us, so how about you hop in a nice, hot shower while I get the munchkin to bed. Then I’ll get that bike going, and hey, how about I take half those presents off your plate.”

Kurt nods, his own smile matching the oddly accommodating grin on his husband’s face – a grin that seems more than just a little off, but Kurt decides to play along.

“I’ll definitely take you up on that,” Kurt says. “Thank you.”

Kurt continues to smile at Sebastian. Sebastian smiles back, bobbing his head ridiculously in constant agreement until he realizes he’s not going to win.

“We’re still not having sex tonight, are we?” Sebastian asks, giving his husband’s ass a squeeze.

“Not a chance, big guy,” Kurt says, pecking a kiss to his husband’s lips, “but good try.”

 


	21. Sebastian's Bicycle Dilemma

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sebastian absolutely fails at putting together his son's bike. With zero time left to fix anything and his sex life at stake, he's forced to call in a professional.
> 
> Written for the Hummel Holidays prompts 'family' and 'Christmas', and focusing more on Sebastian's relationship with his in-laws.
> 
> Written for freakingpotter, as this was entirely, 100% her fault xD

“ _Stick tab A into slot B_ …What the fuck! What slot B? There’s no slot B!”

“ _Attach part 3a to 3b using one of the thirteen medium screws…but don’t tighten_ …Jesus Christ! Now you tell me!”

“ _For parts 22a and 22b, do not tighten screw and nut too far or you risk bending the metal_ …merde! Merde, merde, merde, merde, MERDE!”

Sebastian sits on the living room floor a failure, his son’s bike in thirteen pieces scattered around him like the broken remains of some viper red metallic zombie horde. The parts he had managed to screw together form the skeleton of an aluminum beast, and after a fifty-third read thru of the instructions (in French, since the English side makes even less sense) he discovers that he did the middle half in reverse somehow.

If Sebastian Smythe was ever a man to break down and cry over anything, this would definitely be the time.

No. He has to keep his head. He has to come up with a plan. There’s never been anything in his life he hasn’t been able to talk or buy himself out of. One of those two methods had to apply here. He pulls his iPhone out of his pocket and checks the time. It’s 4:45 a.m. on Christmas morning, so buying another new bike might be possible, if he’s willing to go to _(shudder)_ Walmart. But this bicycle…Thomas picked this one out special. Sure, he might not care in the long run. He might just love whatever bike he gets because it’s a bike and he’s been talking about getting one non-stop for months.

But Kurt will know. Kurt will know it’s not the same one that he himself ordered.

And Sebastian will never live it down.

Oh, why did he not let Kurt pay extra to have it assembled? Why in hell did he think he needed the ‘dad experience’ of putting together a bicycle on Christmas Eve? What did he think this was, a Hallmark Christmas special? This was real life, and in real life, as talented as Sebastian is with his hands, putting things together that require more tools than a flat-head screwdriver are a little beyond his scope.

It’s time he called in…a professional.

But first, he has to buy himself some time.

He turns the alarms off. He hides Kurt’s phone. He closes the black-out curtains tight in all the rooms. He sends a very important text message.

Then he sits in the living room and waits.

At six a.m., a half-dead asleep Sebastian raises his heavy head at the sound of a Ram pickup pulling up outside the house. Sebastian stands slowly, on his guard for any sound – the patter of excited feet racing toward the living room, his husband lumbering into the kitchen to start the coffee machine, but there’s nothing. Sebastian’s attempts to keep the house quiet and dark are working in his favor. Excellent. He’s safe…for now. If he can answer the door before… _shit!_ Sebastian hops to his feet, his left leg stinging, numb from being folded underneath his body for the past few hours. It doesn’t want to move, or hold much of his weight, so he drags it to the side as he hobbles quickly for the door, catching it before the people coming up the walk, whispering urgently, have a chance to ring the bell.

“Sebastian!” Carole yelps when he yanks open the door. “Wha---what’s going on? Oh my God!” She takes in his appearance – his wrinkled sweatpants and t-shirt, his hair sticking up and out in all directions, the bags under his eyes a violent shade of purple. “You look awful, honey! You said you had a problem and it was important…”

“Yeah,” Sebastian mutters. “Yeah, I do…hi…” He opens his arms to his mother-in-law, ushering her into the warmth of the house, along with the man he hopes will save the day. He doesn’t have time for pleasantries. He simply jumps to the chase. “Help me, dad?” he begs, giving Burt a quick hug. “Please? Help me?”

“Why?” Burt asks, looking concerned. “What did you do this time?”

“Well, I…wait… _this time_?” Sebastian has a moment of clarity, long enough to look offended, but with a tired Burt staring him down and the realization that he probably deserved that one, he drops it and continues. “I was supposed to put Thomas’s big Christmas present together, but I think I really fu--- uh, screwed up.”

Sebastian steps aside and reveals the monstrosity. Carole gasps into chuckles. Burt tilts his head, walking around and examining it from all angles.

“What’s it supposed to be?” he asks.

“Oh God.” Sebastian drops his head back and covers his face with his hands. “I messed it up so bad that you can’t tell it’s a bike. You! Of all people!”

“Calm down, sweetheart,” Carole says. “You’re going to give yourself a heart attack.”

“I can’t,” Sebastian groans behind his hands. “There’s too much at stake.”

“Too much at stake,” Carole repeats, confused. “Do you mean…your… _marriage_?” she asks tentatively. She can’t imagine that that was Kurt’s ultimatum, especially considering her son and his husband have one of the most stable marriages she’s ever seen. Kurt pretty much tells her everything. He never mentioned any fighting, any issues of any kind. He was so excited about today, about having the family together. He even mentioned how in love he was with his insane husband. Could that have been a bit of a black truth? Kurt is usually the dramatic one, but these theatrics from Sebastian…this is too much of a breakdown for there to be anything else on the line.

“Worse,” Sebastian mumbles. “If I don’t have this bike put together by the time Tom-Tom wakes up…Kurt said he’ll never have sex with me again.”

“Oh, sweetie,” Carole sighs, relieved. She puts a hand on Sebastian’s shoulder, fighting back laughter so hard that it’s turning into tears. “I think you’re overreacting just a tad…”

“No” - Sebastian shakes his head wildly - “no, mom. No, you don’t understand. We had a deal. I put together the bike and he’d wrap the rest of the presents. And do you _see_ all the presents?” Sebastian gestures to the stacks of neatly wrapped gifts under the tree. “He’s been wrapping them _all_ day.”

“Why didn’t you guys just pay to get it assembled?” Carole asks.

“Because…I…wanted…to do it,” Sebastian admits, sheepishly peeking out from behind his fingers.

Carole almost can’t stifle her laughter any longer.

“How’s that right hand treating you?” Carole snickers. “I think the two of you are about to become very well acquainted.”

“Oh God,” Sebastian moans the same time Burt grumbles about not mentioning his sons and sex in the same sentence, especially before he’s had his morning coffee.

“If I fix this for you,” Burt asks, already lying the bike-thing on its side, “do you promise never to make a comment about your sex life with my son again?”

Sebastian puts his hands on his hips and nods resolutely, but then he shakes his head.

“I won’t lie to you, dad,” Sebastian says, desperation taking over where snark usually would, but, apparently, it makes little difference. “I can’t promise that won’t ever happen again. But this isn’t about me. It’s for Thomas.”

Burt blows out a breath, looking from his hopeless son-in-law, over to Carole, trying hard not to cackle out loud and wake the whole household.

“Alright,” he relents, taking off his coat, “hand me a wrench. And just…no more talking unless it’s about the Buckeyes or the weather.”


	22. Better with Age

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spending a quiet evening at home on New Year’s Eve, Kurt begins to wonder if he and his husband are growing old too quickly. 
> 
> Inspired but the Hummel Holidays prompt ‘midnight kiss’.

“Sebastian, are we…old fogies?”

Sitting on their sofa with Kurt’s feet in his lap, Sebastian glances up from where he’s reading _Good Omens_ on his iPad and looks at his husband, vaguely offended. It’s ten o’clock on New Year’s Eve, and in a historic feat, their son is in bed before midnight, so they decided to indulge in some much needed quiet time. Soothing strains of classical music play from the corner stereo; the lights dimmed to best display their Christmas tree, which will stand in their living room for the remainder of the week before they pack the holiday decorations away; and Kurt and Sebastian sitting on the couch, reading quietly, just enjoying being together.

“No,” Sebastian answers with a slight huff. “And even if we were, we’d be hot as fuck old fogies. Why do you ask?”

“I don’t know” – Kurt peeks down at the magazine in his hands, open to an article discussing whether their generation has chosen to age too quickly, forgoing the adventures of raucous youth earlier than their parents did – “I was just thinking back to a time before we had Thomas, when we lived in the city. On New Year’s Eve, we’d hit every party we could, get buzzed out of our minds, then find some place to wait till midnight and make out like mad.”

“Yeah, well, those were the _fun_ times,” Sebastian remarks sarcastically, “but there are a lot of things I did back then that I would rather not remember or repeat.”

“I know,” Kurt says, patting Sebastian’s leg gently.

“ _But_ ,” Sebastian presses on, eager to switch subjects, “if you’re bummed out about staying in, we can still hit the city. Wes’s younger sister is visiting from college, and Thomas is cool with her. I think she’d be down to make an easy couple hundred watching him sleep.”

“Yeah, we could do that.” Kurt sits up, excited by the idea, but too fast, his excitement deflates a hair. “Oh, but we’d never be able to find a place to park.”

“We can call a car,” Sebastian suggests, shrugging off Kurt’s concern.

“Yeah” – Kurt becomes excited again, but another thought dulls his sparkle – “but even if we can find someone to come out within the next two hours, it’ll be expensive as hell.”

Sebastian tilts his head and gives his husband an incredulous look.

“Just because we _have_ money, Sebastian, doesn’t mean we should throw it away,” Kurt says. “In that case, we might as well stay home, shred fifties into confetti, and toss it out the window at midnight.”

Sebastian points at Kurt, a thoughtful look brimming in his eyes. “You know, that’s not a bad idea.”

Kurt’s eyebrows pop up. “You want to shred fifties and throw them out the window?”

“No,” Sebastian chuckles. “We can stay in, break out that bottle of bubbly we’ve got stashed in the fridge, and skip to the end where we get buzzed and make out like mad.”

Kurt smiles. “That’s a _much_ better idea.”

“You think?”

“Yup. We can definitely do that,” Kurt says, climbing across the couch to sit in his husband’s lap. “Think of all the hassle we’ll be missing out on.”

“Aha,” Sebastian hums, slipping his hands beneath Kurt’s shirt. “No crowds, no cold, no loud music…”

“…no forgetting where we parked…”

“…or waiting three hours for our car to come back…”

“Well, do we have to wait till closer to midnight, or can we get started now?” Kurt asks, lowering his gaze down his body to where Sebastian’s hands have started toying with the drawstring to his lounge pants.

“Ooo, is my husband all hot and bothered already?” Sebastian murmurs, attacking Kurt’s neck with a hand weeding down the back of Kurt’s loosened pants.

“That,” Kurt moans, “ _and_ I was kind of hoping we could pack it in early. I’m exhausted.” Kurt turns his head and puts a hand to his mouth, the mention of being tired making him yawn.

“Good God, I thought you’d never ask.” Sebastian stands, picking Kurt up and carrying him to the kitchen to fetch their bottle of champagne. “I’ve been nodding off behind my iPad for the past half hour.”


	23. A Witch, Not a Warlock

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thomas has a unique request for what he wants to be for Halloween, which Kurt is more than happy to help him with, but it ends up coming with some unexpected stress...and an equally unexpected revelation on Kurt's part.
> 
> Written for the Kurtoberfest prompt 'trick or treat'. Warning for anxiety and a lot of parental concern.

“What an adorable little warlock!”

Kurt sighs to himself. It’s the first comment like this that they’ve gotten so far, but they’re only at the first house on the block. Kurt knows it’s not going to be the last.

“Actually,” Kurt says, putting his hands protectively on Thomas’s shoulders, preparing to deflect whatever unintendedly offensive remark his explanation might garner, “he’s dressed as a witch this year for Halloween, not a warlock.”

“Oh?” The woman at the door, holding a bowl filled with Butterfinger bars, sizes Thomas up and down. Kurt’s son stands on the woman’s doorstep dressed in a black, ankle-length gown with that Kurt designed and made; holding an authentically-styled besom, which Kurt and Thomas created together using twigs they gathered in their front yard. Kurt spent close to an hour doing Thomas’s makeup, covering the boy’s skin with green face paint, shading his cheeks and eyes in black to make his chubby-cheeked, cherub boy look sinister (which didn’t work too well since Thomas’s natural cuteness prevailed against Kurt’s makeup mastery). Kurt even fashioned a hooked nose prosthetic and wart from liquid latex. Kurt went through all of this in the hopes that Thomas would look undeniably, unmistakably like a witch. Apparently, it didn’t work as well as he thought. “But, aren’t male witches traditionally called warlocks?”

“Maybe,” Kurt says, keeping his voice bright and his disposition cheery for as long as he can before he’s forced to call in for reinforcements, “but Thomas decided he wanted to be a _witch_ for Halloween, so that’s what he is.”

“Yup,” Thomas says proudly, holding his bag up for his piece of candy, “and Hepburn is my animal familiar.” Thomas looks over his raised arm at his Labradoodle, sitting patiently beside him. The woman’s eyes follow, raising a brow at the dusty-brown colored service dog. Thomas leans in close to the lady putting two bars of chocolate in his bag. “We were going to dress him up as a cat, but I thought that might be a little mean. You know…because he’s a dog.”

“Gotcha.” The woman gives Thomas a wink that, thankfully, looks genuine. “Well, you definitely have my vote for best witch costume this year,” she says. “Happy Halloween.”

“Happy Halloween,” Kurt says, smiling as he steers Thomas down the street. He breathes a sigh of relief, but it doesn’t calm him. They’ve just started their route. They still have about three blocks of houses to go.

And each one goes about the way Kurt pictured it.

_Knock-knock._

“Trick or Treat!”

“What an adorable warlock!”

“I’m a witch.”

“He’s a witch.”

“But isn’t a male witch called a warlock?”

“Normally, I suppose, but this year Thomas wanted to be a witch. So, he’s a witch. Trick or Treat!”

_Knock-knock._

“Trick or Treat!”

“Look at the cute war---“

“Witch. He’s a witch.”

“I’m a witch.”

“But, aren’t male witches…”

“Still a witch. Happy Halloween!”

_Knock-knock._

“Trick or Treat!”

“Oh, Thomas! What an inspired little warlock---“

“Witch! He’s a witch He’s dressed as a witch this year, not a warlock!” There’s an awkward moment of quiet staring between Kurt and the matronly lady at the front door. His smile, about as fake as his exhausted, twitchy lips can form, somehow grows to meet the lines wrinkling his stressed brow. “Happy Halloween!”

By the twenty-fifth house, Kurt’s face is frozen with strain. He’s smiling too tight and grinding his teeth. Before people open their mouths to say anything about his son’s costume, Kurt barks out, “Witch! He’s a witch. Not a warlock, but a witch. He wanted to be a witch, so he’s a witch. Got it? Trick or Treat!”

If Sebastian was going door-to-door with them instead of manning their own front door with a bowl of full-sized Snickers, he would joke that people are giving Thomas two candy bars instead of the requisite one (which they are) not because he’s so damn adorable (which he is) but because they want crazy-eyes Kurt Hummel-Smythe to go away and not come back later in the night to torch their houses.

_Knock-knock._

“Trick or Treat!”

“Oh, Thomas!” Mrs. Henderson, one of their older neighbors, with a son already grown and gone, puts a slightly shaking hand to her lips as she gets a good look at the beaming boy on her doorstep. “Don’t you make the sweetest little---“

“Witch!” Kurt cuts in, his reaction a reflex by now. “He’s a witch!”

Mrs. Henderson stares at Kurt, wide-eyed with surprise, but aims a delighted smile at Thomas.

“I was just about to say what a smart little witch you make, Thomas,” she says. “And what a bold costume choice.”

“Thank you,” Thomas says, rolling on his heels and waiting patiently for his candy.

“You know, when my Artie was seven, he wanted to be Malibu Barbie for Halloween.”

Kurt’s stiff veneer softens at the green-eyed woman addressing his little boy.

“Really?” Kurt asks, astonished.

“Yup,” she says. “He’d made up his mind the second those dolls hit the shelves, and asked me for a costume every day after that. Told everyone we knew about it. Even told people on the street.”

“Why did he want to be Barbie so badly?” Kurt asks, relaxing enough to lean against the doorframe, no longer gearing up for an argument.

“Well, look at her!” Mrs. Henderson chuckles. “She had a dream house, a Corvette, she was a doctor, went to the moon, flew a plane, she was even president.”

“True,” Kurt agrees, surprised that he’d never thought of it that way. With the way people always cry out to ban Barbie for promoting an unhealthy body image, Kurt had overlooked all of the positive things Barbie has done in her life, things little girls (and boys) should be encouraged to try and do.

The conversation pauses while Mrs. Henderson reaches for a treat for Thomas, the inevitable question hanging in the air, but Kurt feels like a hypocrite for considering asking it.

“My Artie isn’t homosexual,” Mrs. Henderson says, answering the question anyway, as if she knew that’s what Kurt was waiting for. She tucks a popcorn ball and a Three Musketeers into Thomas’s bag. “But that wouldn’t have mattered. Barbie is a role model as far as I’m concerned, and I felt there was nothing wrong with it. Other people” – She shrugs – “well, you know what they say about opinions and butt holes.”

“Mrs. Henderson!” Thomas exclaims with a giggle. Kurt laughs.

“Yeah, I know,” Kurt says with a wink. “So, what did you do?”

“Well, I made him two costumes that year,” she explains. “I made him a Malibu Barbie costume - the gold swimsuit with a pink cover-up shirt that ties in the front, and a big blonde wig. But I also made him a Superman costume with a cape and…” Mrs. Henderson shakes her head. “You know, I knew which one he was going to pick, so I put extra time and effort into it.”

“Which one was he?” Kurt asks, on the edge of his proverbial seat.

Mrs. Henderson puts a finger up, reaching out to a shelf by the door for a photo album. She flips a few pages, then shows Kurt and Thomas a photograph of a smiling boy in a blonde wig, wearing a gold bathing suit with a pink cover-up.

“Oh my goodness!” Kurt chuckles. “He looks adorable!”

“Thank you,” Mrs. Henderson says, holding the album lower for Thomas to see. “You know, there were three other children dressed as Barbie that year, but he was the cutest. Everyone said so.”

“Where’s that costume now?”

“Artie’s daughter wore it for Halloween a few years back,” she says, returning the album to its shelf. “This year she wanted to be Cobra from G.I. Joe, and you know, no one gave her any grief about it. Most people think it’s cute, her being a fan of _boy_ things.”

Kurt nods. “Strange, huh?”

“Meh,” the older woman says with a wave of her hand. “It’s the way of human beings to try and stick everybody in a little box with their name on it, and three lines maximum saying who they are, but there’s only one time in your life you should ever let that happen, and even then, make sure you approve of the summary.”

“Yeah,” Kurt says, catching her meaning. “Good night, Mrs. Henderson. Thanks so much for everything.”

“Yup,” Thomas agrees, happy to move on since most of the conversation had started going over his head. “Three Musketeers are my favorites!”

“I’m glad,” she says, giving Kurt and Thomas a final wave. “Have a safe night.” She backs into her house and closes the door, and the smile on Kurt’s face starts to look a little less manic.

Energized after their discussion with Mrs. Henderson, they hit three more houses, but as the lights start to go off in some of the windows, and the crowds of younger kids begin to thin, Kurt turns them around and takes his yawning little witch back home.

***

“Okay,” Sebastian says, climbing under the comforter with his worn-out husband, already in bed and reading a magazine, “I got the story from the munchkin while I was tucking him in. Now you tell me - how did it go?”

“About sixty/forty,” Kurt says, closing his magazine and setting it aside. “But to tell you the truth, by the time we reached our last house, I began to realize that most of the stress of the evening was on me. Nobody was trying to be mean to Thomas or anything. His costume just needed a little explaining. I shouldn’t have assumed.”

“Did you see the look on his face when he got home?” Sebastian lays down with his head in Kurt’s lap. “If anyone _did_ give him the evil eye, I don’t think he noticed one way or the other.”

“They didn’t,” Kurt reassures him.

“That’s good,” Sebastian says with a _they better not have or else_ expression on his face.

“That’s because we live in a nice, polite, mostly tolerant, sheltered little hamlet,” Kurt says. “We might have our differences with a few of our neighbors, but for the most part, they’re decent people.”

“Including Mrs. Sebiane?” Sebastian raises his eyebrows playfully, waiting for the rant he knows is coming.

“Okay,” Kurt says, talking with his hands, “I mean, I love butterscotch chips as much as the next person, but please! They shouldn’t go in everything!”

“She says it’s her secret ingredient.”

“Yeah, well FYI, it isn’t a secret, especially when everything she bakes comes out puke orange.”

“Oh, God!” Sebastian laughs. “That image is going to be burned into my eyes forever.”

Kurt crosses his arms, grazing his husband’s nose with his elbow, but Sebastian stays put. With his head in his husband’s lap is one of Sebastian’s favorite positions in the world. But before Sebastian’s eyes, the fire in Kurt’s expression dims, and an overall look of tired returns to his face.

“Bas?” Kurt stares at the wall when he speaks, at the pictures hanging there of their little family – Sebastian and Kurt on their wedding day, Thomas and Hepburn on the first day of school, his father and Carole from last Christmas, old pictures of Finn from way back in high school. His eyes land on those and stay there, on pictures taken in the choir room, the auditorium, the gym. “Is it awful that I hope that Thomas…isn’t gay?”

Sebastian sighs. He saw this coming, and not just because of tonight. It’s been weaving its way in the background of many of their recent conversations with regard to their son. Lately, with his anxiety issues and his OCD becoming more manageable, those haven’t been the huge, daunting problems they seemed in the beginning. But the moment Thomas asked Kurt if he could be a witch for Halloween, at the start of the school year when his class started reading selections by Roald Dahl, Sebastian had seen something foreign in Kurt’s eyes, something Kurt wasn’t talking about, something Sebastian himself had never even thought to consider.

“No,” Sebastian says, taking Kurt’s hand. “It’s not awful, sweetheart. It’s understandable. You don’t want him to have problems. You don’t want him to get bullied the way you did. You don’t want people to make the choice to hate him without getting to know him. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“If the world were just a little bit different…” Kurt starts, but a sniffle stalls his progress.

“I know,” Sebastian says, kissing Kurt’s hand. “And it’s Thomas’s generation that has to carry the burden of making it different. I mean, you and I, and the generation after us, we’re doing what we can, but I’m not sure it’s going to be what it needs to be when the time comes.”

“That’s part of what I’m afraid of,” Kurt says in a shaky voice. “I catch myself praying that if he is gay, that _he_ changes and not the world, and I…” Kurt’s words become a nervous laugh, “I kind of hate myself for it.”

“Hey,” Sebastian sits up, pulling his husband into his arms and rocking him gently. “It’s okay. Don’t be so hard on yourself. Isn’t that my job?”

“Yeah.” Kurt chuckles at his husband’s weak attempt at raunchy humor. “You’re not doing it very well if I’m thinking about all this crap.”

Sebastian laughs lightly, and kisses Kurt on the forehead.

“It’s okay to be scared,” he says. “You’d be a fool if you weren’t. But the important thing is that if Thomas ever does come to us and tell us that he’s gay, or bi, or pan, or ace, or trans, or anything else under the sun, that we’re the most loving, supportive parents we can be, right? We should live in the kind of world that accepts our son no matter what, not the kind he needs to change to live in, but…that’s not reality.”

“I know,” Kurt says. “You’re right.”

“I know I’m right,” Sebastian says. “It happens quite a bit. You always sound so surprised when you say that.”

Kurt looks at Sebastian, his smile wavering at the corners. “How did you get to be so smart?”

“I lucked out,” Sebastian says.

“Genetics?”

“Hell, no,” Sebastian says, squeezing Kurt tight. “I married a brilliant, compassionate, gorgeous man, and I think he’s rubbing off on me.”

 


	24. The Unflappable Mr. Kurt Hummel-Smythe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the midst of enjoying an 'afternoon delight' with his husband, Kurt suddenly remembers an extremely important phone call that he forgot to make. Sebastian isn't about to let that get in the way of his orgasm...or three...sans kid in the house, and Kurt isn't going to let Sebastian fucking him keep him from making his important phone call.

“Oh, God…” Kurt moans, rolling his head on his neck as he raises and lowers himself, up and down, up and down, on his husband’s cock. “Oh, God…oh, God…oh, God…”

Usually the sound of Kurt moaning is enough to drive Sebastian completely, out of his mind, fire burning from his head to his toes insane, but something about this constant chant doesn’t sound as erotic as Kurt’s normal whimpers of ecstasy. This sounds tired…distracted…maybe even a little bored.

“Uh, Kurt,” Sebastian says, tapping his husband’s stomach to get his attention. Kurt lowers his eyes, and Sebastian, lying beneath him, gives him a little wave. “Yeah, hi…Kurt, I can’t help but feel like you might not be enjoying yourself. Or maybe that you, you know, would rather be somewhere else?”

“Oh, no!” Kurt’s face shifts quickly, guilted by his husband’s assumption. “No, no…it’s not that…”

“Good,” Sebastian says, blowing out a sigh of relief, “because we only have about thirty minutes before the van brings Thomas and Hepburn home, so I would really like to get at least three orgasms in before then. You know, the obscenely loud, _I don’t care who hears_ kind? So, chop chop, and make with the fucking.”

Sebastian actually claps at Kurt, and Kurt swats him on the chest.

“I am…I will…it’s just…I…I feel like I’m forgetting something.”

“Yeah,” Sebastian says, bucking up under his husband’s static body, “you forgot that you’re fucking your husband, now come on.”

“No, it’s not that…” Kurt’s voice drifts off. “It’s something…important…”

Sebastian scowls at Kurt, ready to tell him off, when Kurt snaps his fingers, his face going suddenly blank, his eyes flying open wide.

“OhmyGod! The new therapist! I forgot to schedule the meeting with the new therapist!”

Sebastian’s brow creases, causing sweat above his nose to roll down the bridge. “What new therapist?”

“Thomas’s new occupational therapist!” Kurt elaborates, hoping that now it will jar Sebastian’s memory. “You know, the guy up in Ridgemont Valley? The one that Wes said we have to jump on because his schedule fills up fast?”

“Well, you’re jumping on _me_ now,” Sebastian pouts, using his hands to try and persuade his husband’s hips to move, “so the therapist can wait.”

“No, it cannot wait!” Kurt mimics in exasperation, leaning toward the nightstand and grabbing his phone. “I should have called him yesterday, but I was tied up.”

“I know,” Sebastian smirks, biting his lower lip. “I have the pictures.”

“Yeah, you’re funny,” Kurt deadpans. “Remember, you promised you’d passcode those. We don’t need a repeat of Christmas when Carole needed to borrow your phone.” Sebastian can’t help snickering at the memory of his mother-in-law’s shocked face, even though she was cool about it afterwards, swiping through Sebastian’s gallery, commenting on form and composition, while Kurt and his dad sank deep into the cushions of the couch.

Sebastian knows snickering will only make Kurt swat him again.

And Kurt does.

“Let me up so I can make this call.”

“Nu-uh,” Sebastian says, locking his hands around Kurt’s hips. “You want to make that call, you do it from right here. I ain’t stopping.”

“Sebastian Smythe,” Kurt scolds, dialing the number while his husband holds his hips hostage and starts fucking him slowly, “you know, you can be a real assho---Oh, hello! My name is Kurt Hummel-Smythe, and I’m calling for Dr. Redding. I’m trying to make an appointment for my son, Thomas Hummel-Smythe?...That’s right. Dr. Leung referred us…Uh, my husband is a bit _occupied_ at the moment…okay, I’ll hold…”

“No, you won’t,” Sebastian mutters vindictively, spitting in his palm and grabbing Kurt’s cock, torturing him with long, slow strokes, then switching to quick, hard pumps, swiping over the head and the drop of pre-cum forming, twisting on the down stroke the way Kurt likes. Kurt’s free hand creeps down his body to toy with his husband’s nipples, his head falling back as he absorbs every stroke, all while listening intently for the hold muzak on the phone to cut off.

“Ah, yes, Dr. Redding. Hello,” Kurt says, not even in a moan, and Sebastian feels disappointed at all his sensual hard-work gone to waste. “I wanted to talk to you about making a new patient appointment for my son, Thomas?...Yes, his father will be present as well…yes, I can forward you his school records and his immunization card…yes…I see…I understand…I’ll be sure to fill out that paperwork today…”

Throughout Kurt’s conversation, Sebastian slowly ups the ante. He takes Kurt’s roaming hand in his mouth and sucks on his fingers, one at a time. He scratches lightly up Kurt’s thighs, fondles his balls, and strokes gently over his shaft with just his fingertips, employing the many ways he knows to tease his husband to this side of insanity.

“The thirteenth?” Kurt continues in an unsullied voice. “Is that a Thursday?...Then that’ll be fine…Yes, he has a service animal, we’ll be sure to bring him along. And his shot records?…Yes…absolutely he’s had a recent rabies vaccination…”

Sebastian strokes faster, scratches harder, his fondles turning in to deep massages, watching in awe as his infallible husband continues to discuss the specifics of their son’s anxiety disorder with this new therapist. Kurt’s not completely unfazed by the effort Sebastian’s putting in to slipping him up, hoping to make Kurt lose it in the form of a moan or an expletive, but he exhibits a level of self-control that’s positively inhuman.

That voice of his, that can sing like a siren in the throes of passion, doesn’t waver a teeny tiny inch.

“Yes,” Kurt says, smiling his most satisfied and diplomatic smile. “Yes, we’ll be there on Thursday. And yes, we’ll have those records sent to your office as soon as possible. I really appreciate you being able to squeeze us in last minute like this…” Sebastian’s jaw drops when Kurt doesn’t even chuckle at that pun. “Thank you very much. Good afternoon.”

Kurt hangs up the call, and in a split second, everything changes. He slams his iPhone down on the bed and tosses his head back, releasing a long, shattered, pent up moan.

“Oh my God, oh my God!” Kurt’s whole body shakes, his ass pounding down on Sebastian’s cock, his restraint ready to break.

“How the fuck do you do that?” Sebastian asks.

“Discipline,” Kurt says, swallowing the word. “Focus…and a _lot_ of fucking practice.”

“When do you practice _that_?” Sebastian asks.

“Do you remember when I said you can be a real asshole?” Kurt grunts. “Do you know how many times you’ve stuck your hand down my pants in public? Lecture halls? Libraries? Movie theaters? Family dinners?”

“Oh, yeah,” Sebastian says, as if he forgot, or the thought had never occurred to him. “I guess I have, huh?”

“Yeah, well, let’s hurry this up! Chop chop!” Kurt teases. “Not only will Thomas be home in about” – His eyes drift to his iPhone – “seventeen minutes, I’ve got a shitload of paperwork to email to Dr. Redding’s office.”

“You know,” Sebastian groans when his husband pins his body to the mattress and starts to ride him into it, “the way you can switch gears like that from man-whore to dad is hot, but it’s also kind of disturbing...you know, considering…”

“That’s what’s wrong with you and your one-track mind,” Kurt says, his spine shivering, desperately aching to cum. “You don’t know how to multi-task.”


	25. Pumpkin Faces

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kurt, Sebastian, and their son Thomas are gathered in the living room, carving faces into their pumpkins. Humorous conversation and fluff ensues xD
> 
> Written for the Kurtoberfest prompt 'pumpkins'. Rated T for language.

A straight cut here. A curved slice there. A poke and a prod and a pluck. The entire Hummel-Smythe family, dog included, ruminates over their pumpkins as they create the trio of terrifying monsters that will adorn the front porch. Kurt, using a template that he found on the Internet, has decided to go with an image that is both aesthetically grotesque as well as psychologically horrifying – Donald Trump. He plans on placing it underneath the _Hillary Clinton for President_ sign they’ve had up since the primaries, with a “bloody” hatchet sticking into its orange flesh at the top.

 _For flair_ , he told his husband when Sebastian raised an eyebrow at Kurt’s idea.

Kurt also plans on keeping his pumpkin outside until it decays into a rotting, festering pile of moldy slop…and then set it on fire.

His own form of political protest.

Thomas hasn’t revealed the identity of his pumpkin face yet, nor shown a single inch of it to his parents, only to his dog, consulting with the animal over eye placement and (from what Kurt can tell during a hushed conversation) the shape of the teeth. Otherwise, Thomas sits hunched over with his pumpkin propped between his legs, concentrating hard on the face emerging beneath the safety blade of his neon green pumpkin cutter. Sitting in a clumsy triangle, dad, dad, and son are all hard at work on their masterpieces. But in the quiet of their newspaper covered living room, Thomas can’t shake the feeling that he’s being watched.

They don’t live in a creepy house. A _big_ house, but not a creepy one. Thomas has never felt anything but completely safe living there with his dads. But still, he has an uncanny feeling, a cold tickle at the base of his neck that tells him that someone, or some _thing_ , is paying a whole lot of attention to him right now.

He looks at his dog Hepburn, lying beside him on the floor, gaze aimed up the way it always is to keep an eye on his boy, but that’s not the attention Thomas feels. He lifts his head slowly…slowly…eyes peeking up last in fear of what he may see…and jumps at two sets of eyes staring back at him.

“Ah! Daddy!” Thomas giggles. “Papa! You’re not supposed to be peeking!”

“We can’t help it!” Kurt says. “You’ve been so serious over there for the past half-an-hour. We’re curious!”

“Yeah! Show us, Thomas!” Sebastian pipes in, tickling his son under the arms.

“Yes! Show us your scary pumpkin face!”

“Wait a second! Wait a second!” Thomas says, quickly putting the final touches on his pumpkin. “I’m not done with it yet!”

“Well, hurry up!” Sebastian urges. “We’re impatient men!”

Thomas bounces up and down on his seat in his excitement. “Okay, okay! I’m done! On the count of three.”

“One…” Kurt counts.

“Two…” Sebastian picks up.

“Three!” Thomas cheers, turning his pumpkin so his fathers can see. The roughly carved façade of a nondescript ghoulish face stares back at them. One side of the pumpkin is almost gone, the remaining 20% unequal eyes and mismatched teeth, a few stray slices left where they shouldn’t be, but still the most gallant effort by a six-year-old that Kurt has ever seen (in his totally biased opinion).

“That is _super_ scary!” Sebastian says, pretending to shiver when Thomas growls for added affect. “Good job, kiddo.”

“You think so?” Thomas asks, growling again so his dads can make an informed decision.

“Absolutely. It’s excellent.” Kurt pulls the boy into his lap and gives him a squeeze. “You did an _amazing_ job.”

“Thank you, thank you,” Thomas says with two little bows, and Sebastian grins. Thomas gets _that_ from Kurt. Thomas smiles proudly from Kurt to Sebastian, then grimaces when his gaze falls on Sebastian’s pumpkin.

“Uh…what are _you_ making, Daddy?”

Kurt takes his first glance at Sebastian’s pumpkin, scrunching his nose at the mangled gourd sitting in front of his husband. Kurt tilts his head one way, and the combination of cuts and chunks taken out seem to want to be a mummy…type thing. He tilts his head the opposite way, and it looks more like a bruised honeydew melon. “Yeah. What _is_ your pumpkin face supposed to be, Bas?”

“Originally I wanted to do something traditional,” Sebastian says, plucking out a perfectly crosshatched piece that Kurt is sure turned out that way by accident. “You know - triangle eyes, circle nose. The stereotypical Jack-O-Lantern. But then I got to thinking…” Sebastian pauses, framing his pumpkin’s face with his hands as if he’s carefully mapping out his next slice.

“Yes,” Kurt says, knowing that his husband is stalling on purpose, “go on. What were you thinking?”

“Well, I was thinking how cool would it be if I didn’t just carve the face of _one_ monster, but _all_ the monsters! You know, the ghost over the wolf man over a vampire and then over Frankenstein. You know, like a tur-duck-hen. That way, my pumpkin wouldn’t just be _one_ kind of scary. It would be _all_ kinds of scary.”

“Wow!” Thomas looks at his father’s pumpkin with the wide eyes of ultimate awe. “That’s so _cool_!”

“Thank you, Thomas,” Sebastian says with a superior sniff. “I thought so, too.”

“Why don’t you go clean up and get ready for bed, Tom-Tom.” Kurt stands the boy up and pats his bottom. “And when you get back, we’ll find a candle for you pumpkin.”

“Yes! Okay. Come on, Hepburn.” Thomas grabs his dog’s collar and tugs once to get him to stand. Then boy and dog run along to their bedroom.

Kurt waits till his son is out of earshot, then he scoots closer to his husband. He peeks over at Sebastian’s pumpkin and smirks, the scent of bullshit from Sebastian’s explanation lingering in the air. “You have _no_ idea what you’re making, do you?”

Sebastian makes another crude slice and tugs, popping a hard won piece out and unintentionally flipping pumpkin guts across the room. “No. No, I do not.”


	26. Night of the Alien Babysitter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A few nights before Halloween, Thomas asks his father to tell him a scary story ...
> 
> And it goes as well as you might expect xD
> 
> Written for the Kurtoberfest prompt 'A dark and stormy night...'

“Come on, babe!” Sebastian groans, rolling onto his back and clutching his growling stomach. “Make with the snacks! We’re _starving_ in here!”

“Yeah, Papa!” Thomas commiserates, lying on the floor and copying the gesture. “We are so so so so hungry!”

“Give me a second, you guys!” Kurt pipes in through the kitchen door. “You can’t rush perfection, you know.”

Sebastian looks at a giggling Thomas and says, “This is true. And everything your Papa makes is perfect so we need to wait.”

“Alright,” Thomas grumps, or tries to. The smile on his face from the tickle fight he and his father had seconds earlier doesn’t want to go away. “But what should we do until he’s done?”

Sebastian shrugs. “I don’t know. You got any ideas, kiddo?”

“Ummm …” Thomas stands. He rolls his eyes to the ceiling, pulling a pensive face while he stalls that tells Sebastian that his little boy _knows_ what he wants, he’s just acting at thinking it over. Sebastian smirks. That’s Kurt’s technique, from the way he taps his right toe, to the way he crosses his arms over his chest and worries his chin with his index finger and thumb. Thomas has it down to a T. Their adopted son, Thomas Hummel-Smythe, could be a miniature Kurt Hummel if ever Sebastian saw one. “Tell me a story?”

“A story, huh?” Sebastian asks, but Thomas is nodding like crazy already. “Okay, well, do you want a _funny_ story or a _scary_ story?”

Thomas opens his mouth to admit he’s undecided when, from outside, the wind begins to blow, knocking a branch from the huge tree out front onto the roof of the house. The tip of the branch dragging along the shingles makes a nails-against-blackboard sound that makes Thomas shiver. But it also helps him make up his mind.

“Ooo, ooo! A _scary_ story!”

“Really?” Sebastian says as if he’s not entirely convinced that’s the best idea when, in reality, he’s just prolonging the torture. “Are you sure? Because, you know, it would be a bummer if you got so scared out of your wits that you had to sleep in me and Papa’s bed tonight.” _More of a bummer for me and Papa_ , Sebastian thinks, but still, he doesn’t want to scare the little peanut.

“Well, just don’t make it _too_ scary, all right? I wouldn’t want Hepburn to get scared,” Thomas says, lumping the blame squarely on his service dog’s shoulders. He wraps his arms around his Labradoodle’s neck, snuggling into the animal’s body closer than is most likely comfortable for the dog, but Hepburn doesn’t object.

“Nah, I won’t make it too scary,” Sebastian promises. He grabs his pillow and lays on his stomach on the sleeping bag spread over the living room floor. Thomas grabs his own pillow and affects the same position. Suddenly, Thomas doesn’t look so much like Kurt anymore, but like Sebastian instead. Sebastian smiles. This mimicking thing that Thomas has been doing is not new, but it’s become more consistent. As much as Thomas can look like Kurt, he can also look like a young Sebastian, especially with his big green eyes and chocolate-colored hair that Kurt likes to swoop up in the front, reminiscent of the way Sebastian wore his hair in high school.

It’s cute to have a little mirror imitating his every move. He just has to be careful not to do anything too adult in front of him, like pinch Kurt’s ass or grab his family jewels.

“It was a dark and stormy night …”

“Oh, this is gonna be good, I can tell,” Thomas tells Hepburn, repeating his favorite Dory quote from the movie _Finding Nemo_. He leans forward, chubby chin perched on the heels of this hands, giving his dad his full attention.

“It was Halloween night, as a matter of fact,” Sebastian adds in the hopes of making the story a teeny bit scarier. Halloween isn’t for another three days yet, but they had gone all out decorating this year. They draped the house inside and out with glow-in-the-dark spider webs and papier mache ghosts. They stuck bloody gel handprints on the windows, and put electric candles on every sill. They erected a cemetery’s worth of Styrofoam headstones on their front lawn (which Sebastian had convinced Kurt, with the help of a brand new pair of Ferragamos, not to rake for added effect). They’d bought a noise machine, a fog machine, a doorbell that played snippets from different horror movie theme songs every time someone pressed it, and, on the tree outside, the same one beating against the eaves, they’d hung several motion-activated ghouls that screeched and flashed blinking red eyes every time anyone came within a foot of the thing.

The afternoon they hung them up, their unsuspecting mailman tossed their mail three feet in the air out of fright.

“This story actually happened to me when I was about your age …”

“Really?” Thomas asks, eyes opening wider with wonder.

“A-ha.” Sebastian digs into his brain to find a story from his own childhood, growing up in a big, old, empty house that he swore for the life of him was haunted. “On this particular Halloween night, I had to stay home from Trick or Treating because I had the chicken pox …”

“That stinks,” Thomas grumbles sympathetically.

“Yes, it did. But my parents had to go to an important fundraiser, so they had to leave me alone with a babysitter.”

“Was it a nice babysitter?” Thomas asks, voice thick with concern.

“Well, you see, that’s the thing …” Sebastian scoots forward and drops his voice to edge up the tension. “There weren’t many people willing to babysit on Halloween night, so I got stuck with a babysitter I had never had before …”

In truth, the girl Sebastian’s parents got to watch him that night was a nice high school senior named Emily, whose parents had a membership at the same country club Sebastian’s parents went to. For religious reasons, their family didn’t celebrate Halloween, so she was available last minute. She had also already had the chicken pox, which made her a perfect fit. She fed Sebastian chicken soup, and they played UNO all night long. In a childhood filled with slightly lukewarm affections from his regularly absentee folks, it’s one of the few evenings that stand out in his memory because, for once, it was all about him. Someone caring for him. Someone paying attention solely to him.

He didn’t get that kind of attention again until he started dating Kurt.

But as that’s a far more bittersweet story than the one he wants to tell, he alters it on the spot to suit their spooky needs.

“When she showed up at the front door, she looked like a normal person. She sure had my folks fooled, but …” Sebastian shakes his head dubiously. “I don’t know. There was just something about her that made my skin crawl.”

“Like _what_?”

“Her smile, for one. It was … a little _too_ wide.”

Thomas drops his jaw. “How wide?”

Sebastian leans his forehead against Thomas’s, explaining the rest close up as if they need to keep it a secret. “So wide that it looked like her face might split in half.”

“Ewww …” Thomas says, scrunching his nose.

“Yeah. Ewww. But her eyes … her eyes were the worst.”

“Why?” Thomas whispers, hugging his service dog until he’s close to strangling the poor thing. “What was wrong with her eyes, Daddy?”

“The blue parts were too blue,” Sebastian says, loosening Thomas’s grip from his patient dog’s neck, “and the blacks were too black. But other than that, she was nice enough. We played games, watched movies. She told me jokes. They were funny.”

Thomas nods in agreement that yes, jokes are funny.

“But just as I was beginning to think that maybe her being weird was all in my head, something _horrifying_ happened.”

“What, Daddy?” Thomas asks, vibrating with a combination of anticipation and fear. “What happened?”

“Well, it was close to midnight, and I needed some medicine. But the medicine I had to take was downstairs in the refrigerator. So my babysitter went down to the kitchen to get it …”

Thomas gulps. “And?”

“She was gone a long time, and I thought that maybe she’d gotten lost. It was a big house, after all. So I decided to go downstairs and check on her …”

Rain begins to fall, the kaPlunk-kaPlunk-kaPlunk syncopation of it grating against the scraping of the branch across the shingles. Thomas trembles.

“Th-then what?”

“Just as I reached the kitchen door, I hear a strange sound. It sounded like when you get your feet stuck in the mud. You pull them out …”

“And they go squish?”

“Yup. That’s the sound. I couldn’t remember anything in our house ever making that sound. Then I heard a loud _splat_ , like she was being sick in the sink, and that wasn’t something I really wanted to see.”

“I wouldn’t either.”

“I don’t blame you. But I needed my medicine, so I snuck up to the kitchen door …”

“Yeah?”

“I put my hand on the knob and turned …”

“Yeah!?”

“I opened the door and peeked inside …”

“YEAH!?”

“I saw her, standing right inside the kitchen door, not a foot away from me. Everything seemed alright though. She was popping popcorn. My medicine was on the kitchen counter, waiting for me. But instead of getting everything together to bring up to my room, she was scratching – at her neck, at her face, all over.”

The rain falls harder, blowing sideways against the window. Thunder rolls too close for comfort. Sebastian’s stomach, complaining from hunger, makes an ungodly noise. Thomas gasps. Sebastian grins. He couldn’t have timed all that any better.

“That’s when it happened,” Sebastian whispers urgently, staring into his son’s eyes. “She grabbed her cheeks, and _peeled_ back her skin – _slurp!_ ”

“No!” Thomas throws his hands over his mouth in surprise and disgust.

“And I saw her for who she really was …”

“What was she, Daddy?” Thomas pleads in a strained voice, kicking at the floor in excitement. “What was she!?”

“I don’t know for sure, Thomas. To this very day, I can’t tell you exactly what she was. But I think …”

“Yes?”

“… she was …”

“Yes!?”

“… an _alien_.”

“No!”

“Yes.”

“B-but … but _how_ do you _know_?”

“Her face was covered in a foul smelling, slimy green goo, like melted pistachio ice cream.”

“Yuck!”

“That’s what I said,” Sebastian says. “She must have heard me because she turned around and caught me standing there.”

“What did she do?” Thomas asks, peeking at his father through lids squeezed to slits.

“She just smiled at me. Stared at me and smiled. Her blue eyes were the size of dinner plates without her human skin. They took up half her face! And she had two rows of pointy white teeth!”

“Oh no!”

“Oh yes! She stared me square in the face, and said …”

“I have the popcorn!”

Father and son snap their faces towards the chipper voice singing its way into the living room. But one face twists in horror as eyes lock on skin smeared with a thick, green paste; blue eyes shining from behind the gloppy mess; and a mouth smiling so wide, it looks as though the face hosting it might split in two.

“Aaaaahhhh!” Thomas screeches, leaping onto Sebastian’s back, with Hepburn following close behind when he hears the fear in his boy’s voice.

“Ugh! _Kurt_!” Sebastian groans when over a hundred pounds of kid and dog scrabbles onto his back.

“What?” Kurt asks, watching the melee taking place with confusion. “What? What did I do?”

With the air knocked out of his lungs, Sebastian can’t speak, so he points to his face. Kurt raises a hand to his cheek. His fingertips come in contact with the layer of glop slathered all over his skin.

“Oh my gosh!” Kurt yelps. “I was … I was multitasking! I thought I’d get this done while the cookies were baking! Oh, Thomas! I’m so sorry! I completely forgot!”

Kurt takes a step towards his husband and son, but Thomas ducks behind Sebastian’s head.

“Is that a monster, Papa?” Thomas asks, his forehead pressed into his father’s shoulder. “Or an … an alien?”

“No, Tom-Tom,” Sebastian says gravely. “It’s something far more dangerous.”

“What?”

“Your Papa, wearing a mint and avocado deep cleansing mask.”

“Daddy!” Thomas giggles.

“Sebastian!” Kurt scolds from the kitchen doorway.

“It’s the truth, babe. Deep cleaning and moisturizing are like your super power. I saw you do it all through high school, and you had the sharpest tongue of any man I’ve ever met. Once you got on a tear, you left very few people alive.”

Kurt hugs the bowl of popcorn he’s carrying to his chest, unsure if it would be safe to approach his son now that he’s laughing. “I think I should feel flattered.”

“Yes, you should,” Sebastian replies.

“How did _you_ survive, Daddy?” Thomas asks.

“The babysitter?”

“No. Daddy’s sharp tongue!”

“Because, I have super powers, too, Tom-Tom. I’m immune to your Daddy’s tongue slashery. That’s how I knew that we were meant to be together.”

“Of course you did.” Kurt rolls his eyes. “Give me a second to rinse this off, and then we’ll get that movie started.”

Sebastian’s stomach growls again watching the retreat of the popcorn mixed with the smell of chocolate chip cookies wafting in through the kitchen door.

“Wait! Kurt!” Sebastian cries, arm outstretched, trying, and failing, to rise to his feet with a little boy and a dog on his back. “Leave the popcorn! Please, leave the popcorn!”

 

 

 

 

 


	27. You Light Up My Life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kurt decides to take a few phone calls while Sebastian and Thomas decorate the tree. Annoyed that Kurt won't get off the phone and decorate with them, they retaliate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the Hummel Holidays prompts lights, decorations, tree, family, and carols.

“So, you’re coming in on the 18th? That’s … that’s great! Of course we’ll be home.” Kurt plugs one ear with his finger as he tries to hold a conversation with his father while behind him, his husband and his son, trimming the Christmas tree, launch into an off-key rendition of _Jingle Bells_.

Seriously, how a man who spent as much time in show choir as Kurt can screw up a simple carol so royally is beyond Kurt’s understanding.

“Yes, it’s alright if you guys stay at a hotel,” Kurt answers in response to his father’s comment about the shenanigans going on in the background. “I won’t be offended. I know you’re an old man who needs his sleep … _Thomas, not now, sweetie_ ,” Kurt mumbles, shooing away the little boy he feels tugging on his pants, probably to get him to join in on the fun. “Yes, noon,” Kurt continues. “We can’t wait to see you.” Kurt feels another hand brush his ass, and he rolls his eyes. This time, it’s his husband trying to get him off the phone. Jesus Christ! He’s only been on for what? About fourteen minutes? And it’s his Dad! “Yes … give Carole all of our love. Okay, then. Bye, Dad.”

Kurt disconnects the call and pockets his phone with a sigh.

“Okay, okay,” he mutters, “what was so important that you couldn’t just let me …?”

Kurt goes to take a step, to join the giggling fiends behind him … except he can’t. He can’t walk. His legs are bound up (not tremendously tight, but still) by a string of unlit Christmas lights that, by all rights, should be on the tree. Kurt looks at the lopsided string clinging to his legs, and sighs more.

“Alright,” he says, hopping to turn around and face his son and his husband, both huddled together, Sebastian holding the plug end, and laughing like a strung Kurt is the funniest thing they have ever seen in their lives. “Can I ask what prompted this?”

“Because,” Sebastian says with a mischievous grin.

“Yeah, because,” Sebastian’s little mimic adds.

“Sebastian,” Kurt says, trying to sound like the voice of calm in front of their impressionable son, “these lights are supposed to go on the tree. Not on me.”

“We had an extra string, so we decided to decorate you, too. Didn’t we Tom-Tom?” Sebastian says, and Thomas giggles. “I mean, all you’ve been doing is talking on the phone since we started decorating the tree.”

“A-ha. To my Dad, making arrangements for Grandpa Burt to visit over Christmas,” he says defensively, with mildly scolding eyes aimed at Thomas.

“Yeah, but before that, it was Isabelle, and before _that_ it was Michael Kors,” Sebastian points out. “I don’t mind you talking to your Dad, but work goes away when we decorate the tree, remember?”

“I …” They had him there. They were right. Yes, his Dad was important, and yes, it was a short call, but Kurt had been on the phone with several other people before that while the boys brought down the boxes of ornaments from the attic, and then while they strung the lights and the garland. “I’m sorry, guys. I guess I just got caught up in the swing of things. You know what the fashion world is like at Christmas. And I telecommute. It’s just so easy to work when all you have to do is pick up a phone.” Kurt pulls his phone out of his pocket. “I promise I’ll stop and do my decorating duty,” he says, turning it off and tossing it on the sofa. “Can you possibly forgive me?”

“Hmm,” Sebastian says, putting his hands on his son’s shoulders, “what do you think, Tom-Tom? Do you think we should accept Papa’s apology?”

Thomas nods without a thought, which warms Kurt’s heart. “Yes,” he says sagely. “Yes, we should.”

“Thank you,” Kurt says to his angelic son. “I appreciate your leniency. Now, can you please unwrap me?”

“Oh, we forgive you,” Sebastian says, “but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be punished.”

“What?”

“What do you think we should do to him, Tom-Tom?”

Suddenly, Kurt’s sage little angel turns into the mirror image of his devilish father. “Light him, Daddy! Light him!”

Sebastian claps his son proudly on the back. “That sounds like an excellent idea, Tom-Tom.”

“Sebastian!” Kurt glares at his husband, struggling to shimmy out of the wires while trying not to snag his pants on the sharp rear ends of the bulbs. “Don’t you dare …!”

Sebastian already has the plug from the lights pushed in to the socket, and just as the unfinished threat leaves Kurt’s mouth, the string of lights wound around his legs springs to red, yellow, blue, and green LED life.

Sebastian and Thomas look at a stunned Kurt glowing in twinkling lights, and they cheer. “Yay!”

“Sebastian!”

“Are you ready Tom-Tom?”

“Ready!” the boy chirps.

“What the …?” Kurt mumbles as they gather, Sebastian on one knee, linking arms with his son.

“Okay, Thomas – one, two, three! _You … you light up my life! You give me hope … to carry on_!”

“Sebastian!” Kurt snaps, irritated voice soaring over their singing. “For crying out loud, you …!” Kurt sees his son stop singing, stop smiling, watches his face drop and his eyes go wide in frightened anticipation of what his father might say. Kurt quickly changes gears from his NC-17 rant to a more G-rated version. “You are being naughty, Sebastian! Very very _very_ naughty!”

Thomas gasps, but Sebastian bursts out laughing, doubling over and almost taking his son to the floor with him.

“Papa?” Thomas asks, looking horrified at the possible fate of his Dad. “Is Santa going to stuff Daddy’s stocking with coal?”

“Probably not,” Kurt grumbles, trying to find the fastest route out of his confinement, “but Papa’s definitely going to stuff _something else_.”

“Kurt?” Sebastian chokes, laughing harder and turning a very distinctive shade of cherry red. “Is that supposed to be a threat or a promise? Because I’m looking forward to it either way!”


	28. Missing You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thomas is missing Kurt terribly while Kurt's away on his first business trip since Thomas joined their family. When Thomas confesses to Sebastian that he misses the way Kurt smells, Sebastian finds a way to help Thomas miss his Papa just a little bit less.

“B-but … I w-want you to come h-home, Papa!” Thomas weeps, arms wrapped around his puppy’s neck, hugging the service animal a little too tight. But Hepburn doesn’t seem to mind. Sebastian has never met such a patient creature in his life. Still, he gives Thomas’s left arm a tug as a signal to ease up.

“I know, Tom-Tom, I know. I want to come home, too. I have to wrap up a few things here, but I’ll be home to tuck you in tomorrow night.” Sebastian can hear Kurt’s voice tremble as much as their son’s. He looks at his phone, smiling sympathetically at his husband on the opposite end of the line, his heart breaking with every one of Thomas’s sniffles. Kurt’s a strong man. He can get emotional from time to time, but it takes a lot to make him teary-eyed.

A sad Thomas is at the top of that list.

The sounds of talking and traffic become louder on Kurt’s end of the call as he leaves his hotel to reach his destination – the _Vogue_ office in Manhattan.

“Alright, guys. I’ve gotta go.”

“Bye, Kurt. We love you. We’ll see you tomorrow.” Sebastian leans toward the phone as if he’s leaning in to his husband’s ear, about to give him a kiss. This is the first business trip that Kurt’s been on since they added Thomas to their family. The second Isabelle invited him to come down to _Vogue_ to help consult over the spread for Fashion Week, Sebastian encouraged Kurt to go. Kurt needed this. He needed to feel like part of the New York fashion scene again, and not just via Skype.

But in all of the excitement of getting Kurt ready to go – along with the three nights of epic goodbye sex that preceded his trip - Sebastian underestimated how much he’d miss him.

Luckily, Thomas is doing a stellar job of projecting his misery for both of them.

“B-b-bye, P-papa! I love you!”

“I love you, too, Thomas. I love you, Sebastian. I miss you both so much! _Taxi_!”

The call cuts off, and Thomas bursts into tears.

“Come on, buddy,” Sebastian says, watching with an aching heart as Thomas buries his head into his Labradoodle’s neck. Sebastian could watch Thomas do that a hundred times – and he thinks he has in the past few days – and it would hurt just as badly as the first. “It’s only one more day. It won’t be that bad.”

“I---I know.” Thomas sniffs. “B-but I miss P-papa _so much_!”

“What do you miss most about him?” Sebastian asks, rescuing poor Hepburn from being strangled by pulling his son into his lap.

“I m-miss his h-hugs … and his k-kissies.”

“But Tom-Tom! I’m hugging and kissying you right now!” Sebastian exclaims, snuggling Thomas tight. It earns him a giggle, but not a smile that lasts.

“It’s not the same! I miss the way Papa smells. And how soft his skin is. You don’t smell like Papa. And your skin isn’t as soft. You have all that …” Thomas pauses, makes vague hand motions around his face “… _stubbly_ stuff on your cheeks”

“True, true,” Sebastian agrees, making a remorseful face.

Then he gets an idea.

And he grins.

“But … I think I can do something about that.”

***

“Okay, guys! I’m home early!” Kurt calls, throwing open the front door and kicking his luggage over the threshold. “Guys?” He scans the empty living room, confused as to where they could be seeing as Sebastian’s SUV is still parked outside. Any place Sebastian would have taken Thomas to cheer him up is a car ride away. Plus, Hepburn’s vest and harness are by the front door. They would never leave Hepburn behind, and wherever Hepburn goes, his vest and harness go, too. “I said screw it!” Kurt continues, bringing in the rest of his bags and shutting the door behind him before going on the search for his husband and son. “Isabelle said she could help with the wrapping up, and I got on the first plane I could catch. So here I … am?”

Kurt turns the corner from the living room into the master bedroom and finds his husband, his son, and his son’s dog, all lying on his bed - Sebastian and Thomas holding Wii controllers, heavy in the throes of Mario Kart, with Hepburn on Thomas’s left side.

And they’re wearing face masks.

Specifically, _Kurt’s_ face masks.

 _Expensive_ face masks.

“Uh, what’s going on here?” Kurt asks, bending to kiss Thomas on the top of his head.

“Mario Kart,” Sebastian and Thomas answer in unison.

“I can see that,” Kurt says.

“I’m winning,” Thomas announces.

“Good for you. I think the question I’d like an answer to is … what’s going on with your faces?”

“We’re masking,” Sebastian says, biting his lower lip and veering to the left to avoid the green turtle shell Thomas’s Waluigi just launched. “I’m wearing blue agave, and Thomas here is wearing chocolate and strawberry.”

“It smells yum, but it doesn’t taste very good,” Thomas says, nearly climbing out from underneath the covers as his car speeds towards the finish line.

“No it doesn’t,” Sebastian agrees, his tone and grimace leading Kurt to believe that the two of them gave the concoction a pretty substantial lick before coming to that conclusion.

“No, well, I didn’t spend $50 on it because I thought it would taste good. But why, may I ask, did you guys decide to slather $150 worth of my best face masks on just to play video games?”

“The masks weren’t a pre-requisite for the video games,” Sebastian explains. “We’re just playing to occupy the thirty minutes we need to wait for these things to dry.”

“Wonderful.” Kurt shakes his head. “But could you please answer the question.” He’s not really concerned about the wasted masks or the money. He’s been trying to instill the concept of boundaries in Thomas, who has recently taken to rummaging through their things and other kids’ cubbies at school without permission. If Sebastian uses Kurt’s things without asking, it may give Thomas the impression that he can do the same.

“Well, after you got off the phone with Tom-Tom here, he couldn’t stop crying. I asked him what he missed most about you, and he said the way you smell. So I tried to remember the last smelly thing you wore before you left, but you took your cologne and your products with you. So we settled on this.”

“Ah.” Kurt sighs. He completely gets it. Whenever his mom went away for longer than a day, he would spray her perfume on his pillowcases and sheets so he could pretend she was tucking him in at night. After she passed, he doused his room in the stuff. The day his father finally got around to changing Kurt’s sheets and doing his laundry wiped the scent almost clean away, and Kurt cried himself hoarse.

He didn’t talk to his dad for a month after.

“Okay, okay, well, you guys I understand …” Kurt sits on the edge of the bed beside Hepburn, head on his paws, watching Thomas play “… but why is _Hepburn_ wearing a mask?”

The dog looks up at the sound of his name, eyes droopy and wide, face covered in a thick, green goop. It’s fairly intact, so at least he’s been good enough not to lick it, but Kurt can’t decide if the expression on his face is one of contentment or resignation.

Sebastian side-eyes his husband, sending him a wink. “He missed you, too.”


	29. Rude Interruption

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thomas wakes up in the middle of the night to sounds of his Papa being eaten alive ...
> 
> ... well, he's almost right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If I remember correctly, I was writing this for the Kurtoberfest prompt "nightmare" or something. I think it fits xD

“D-daddy? P-papa?” Thomas mutters in a groggy, sniffly voice. “C-can I sleep with you?”

“Hey, buddy,” Sebastian says, watching his son rub his eye with the heel of his hand. “What’s up? Can’t sleep?”

“N-no,” he says, dragging his teddy bear into the room, with Hepburn close behind. “I---I had … I had a nightmare.”

“Oh, love,” Kurt coos. “Did you really?”

“A-ha! I heard … sc-scary growling … and m-moaning,” Thomas whimpers. “I thought … I thought you were in pain, Papa! Like something was … was eating you alive!”

“Trying,” Sebastian mutters. Kurt reaches back a hand and slaps his husband on the shoulder.

“Oh, sweetie, I’m alright. See? Not hurt in the slightest. But why don’t you come here and tell us all about it.” Kurt opens his arms to his boy while Sebastian shoots him a look. Because where Thomas goes, Hepburn goes, too, and even with a king size bed, there’s barely room for two grown men over six feet tall, not to mention a little boy and a Labradoodle.

Besides, there’s a small matter of them both being naked that Kurt hasn’t seemed to factor into the equation.

“Don’t you think it might be better if he tells us all about it in _his_ room?” Sebastian asks in a tight voice. “I think there’s a couple of things you’re forgetting.”

“Nonsense.” Kurt wraps his right arm around Thomas’s body while simultaneously shoving Sebastian’s underwear and sleep pants behind him with the other. “I’ve got myself under wraps, so to speak. So why don’t you scurry off to the bathroom and take care of yourself?”

Sebastian brushes Kurt’s ass while he collects his things and feels soft cotton fabric already covering his body.

“How the heck …”

Kurt puts a finger up to shush his husband, his son falling fast asleep in his arms the second his head hit the pillow.

“… do you do that?” Sebastian finishes in a whisper as he backs off the bed, covering his privates with the handful of his clothes.

“I’m superhuman,” Kurt says, brushing Thomas’s hair out of his eyes. “You said so yourself a second ago.”

“About that …” Sebastian lets the sentence drop, forcing Kurt to peek over his shoulder. Kurt raises a brow when he sees Sebastian’s boxer briefs hanging off his still erect cock.

“There’s a fleshjack underneath the sink. Like I said, take care of yourself.”

“You’re a cruel man, Kurt.”

“Well, it’s about to get worse,” Kurt gripes in a singsong voice so as not to alarm his peacefully sleeping son. “Seeing as I was in the same condition a second ago and had to kill it with thoughts of last week’s school field trip to the recycling center, I’m only giving you three minutes to get it done.”

“And if I don’t?” Sebastian asks, seeing an opportunity to torment his husband by taking a leisurely hour in the bathroom for himself. It was Kurt’s inability to keep quiet that got them into this mess after all. Why not exploit the consequences?

“Then I’m hiding all of your toys, and you’re not cumming again for a week.”

Sebastian nods, snarky-ness gone. “Gotcha. Three minutes. I’ll be right …”

“Two minutes.”

“Kurt! You son-of-a …!”

“ _Shhh_!”


	30. Itchy and Scratchy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After a long night of delousing poor Thomas's hair, Sebastian is eager to keep Kurt up, regardless of how tired he is.
> 
> And Kurt helps out, by doing something unintentionally stupid.

“How’s the bug?” Kurt asks, shoving the last of their soiled towels into a trash bag and tying it at the top. He never thought he’d see the day they’d use all twenty-one of their bath towels in one sitting, but apparently there _is_ a first time for everything. Unfortunately, the towels have to sit in their polyethylene cocoons for a full twenty-four hours, so he’ll need to buy a couple more in the morning to tide them over.

“Better than the ones that were in his hair.” Sebastian sighs, the long evening spent gathered in the bathroom with Tom-Tom perched on a stool in front of Kurt’s vanity while Kurt meticulously combed nit after nit out of their son’s hair weighing on his shoulders.

“Is he asleep yet?’

“Out like a light. How are _you_ holding up?”

Kurt raises a hand to brush his drooping bangs from his forehead, but when he catches sight of the white nitrile glove covered in nits, he stops with a jolt. “I don’t think I’ve been this tired since … well, I can’t remember being this tired. What time is it?”

Sebastian fishes his phone from his pocket. Blinking his eyes to re-gain some focus, he looks at the screen. “2:17 in the morning!” he groans. “God! Didn’t we get started at _nine_ or something?”

“Eight,” Kurt corrects. He sets the trash bag aside, spraying it entirely with Lysol for good measure before he opens another one for Thomas’s clothes.

“How did you know how to do that, by the way?” Sebastian asks, snapping on a pair of gloves so he can dive in and help his husband.

“I’m from Ohio.”

Sebastian makes a sound that falls somewhere between a scoff and a yawn. “So am I, and I had _no idea_ what to do.”

“Yeah, but you’re from the wealthy part of Ohio, a.k.a the _sterile_ sector.” Kurt shoves a t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants into the fresh trash bag. “ _I’m_ from the part where lice are so prevalent, we have an actual lice _season_. Classrooms are segregated not by intelligence level, but by your history of contracting lice in the winter, so the school district can keep the repeat offenders isolated and stay ahead of a massive infestation – no pun intended.”

Sebastian chuckles as he gathers up the contents of their two bathroom trashes and combines them into one larger bag. “Have _you_ ever had lice?”

“Only once,” Kurt admits. He removes his gloves, completely covered in Pantene conditioner and dying lice up to his wrists, tosses them into Sebastian’s trash bag, and snaps on a fresh pair. “Some bonehead in one of the remedial fifth grade classes threw his crusty hat in the coat closet with everyone’s clean stuff as a prank, and it landed square on my jacket. My head was infested so badly, my dad almost had to shave my hair to get rid of them all.”

“Sexy.”

“Yeah.”

“How did you avoid it?”

“There was a lady down the block from us who ran a beauty parlor out of her kitchen and she knew how to handle lice. She taught us her technique.”

Sebastian stops what he’s doing and gazes up at the ceiling, trying to picture an eleven-year-old Kurt with no hair, but he can’t. He can no more imagine a young Kurt Hummel hairless than he can his husband bereft of his signature wavy locks … and back in high school, when they hated one another, he’d tried. He’d often considered the ramifications of breaking into Kurt’s dorm room, finding his bottles of product, and spiking them with Nair.

But in the end, after declaring a truce (and one phenomenal blowjob later), cooler heads prevailed, and Sebastian never entertained the thought again.

“I don’t think the world is ready for a bald Kurt Hummel,” Sebastian decides, breaking out a roll of paper towels and a bottle of 409 to wipe down the sink and toilet.

“That’s what I’ve always believed.”

On the counter by the sink, Sebastian stumbles across the hair trimmer Kurt had set out at the ready on the off chance this particular infestation was beyond his ability to control. It didn’t come to that, of course, but there they sat just in case they were needed. Even though they weren’t touched, they’d need to be cleaned before they were put away, so Sebastian starts wiping down the blades when a thought bubbles at the back of his brain.

“Although, it may be about time we got around to shaving something else.”

“Like …?” Kurt assumes Sebastian is referring to Thomas’s poor Labradoodle, who sat obediently by his boy’s side the entire time Thomas was treated. Not that Hepburn was in any danger. Lice are species specific. Human lice won’t infect a dog.

“Like … other areas of your body that may be getting a little unruly, to put it politely.”

Kurt gasps. He subconsciously moves his hands to cover his privates, but remembers – lice. After handling only a few items of Thomas’s clothes, his gloves are already covered in goop and trapped insects, some of the buggers a little more lively than Kurt is comfortable with. He really should avoid getting them on his own clothes if he wants to remain pest-free. So he stands in front of his husband, unable to cross his arms or put his hands on his hips, feeling exposed. “So maybe I’m overdue for a waxing. Have you honestly been paying _that much_ attention?”

“I’m always paying attention,” Sebastian says, rolling his eyes. “It’s my job.”

“How’s that?”

“Well, to quote a completely revolting John Mayer song, your body’s a wonderland. _My_ wonderland. And I consider myself the caretaker. That includes keeping you happy, healthy, _satisfied_ , man-scaped …”

“I don’t know if that’s the most romantic thing you’ve ever said,” Kurt says, eyeing his husband as he approaches, trimmer in hand, “or the most revolting.”

“Which one’s going to get us into bed quicker?”

“Unfortunately, neither. We still have a ton of cleaning to do, and we can’t turn in till it’s done.”

“Well, I recommend we move this party to the guest bathroom so we can get to it then.”

“How are we going to clean _this_ bathroom if we move to a different bathroom, one that doesn’t even need to be cleaned?”

“I figure we can start with the two of us, then move back to this bathroom after we’re done.”

“But we’ll have to take _another_ shower after that!”

“And that’s a bad thing why?”

“Because I’m _exhausted_ ,” Kurt argues, backing up against the bathroom wall with no intention of fighting off his husband’s advances. He can’t help it. He can barely keep his eyes open, but he’s also extremely horny – which is a bit on the disturbing side since he’s just spent the last several hours picking bugs out of his son’s hair.

But that’s what being in love with an incredible and sexy man will do. It makes everything else in the world seem irrelevant.

“You don’t have to do anything,” Sebastian promises. “I’ll take care of everything. I’ll bathe you, I’ll wash your hair, I’ll trim you up, make you all smooth and _presentable_ …”

“Presentable to who?” Kurt chirps a nervous laugh at his husband’s domineering tone. It’s not one Kurt often hears.

It’s different.

It’s unexpected.

It’s _hot_.

“To me … and _only_ me …” Sebastian moves in closer, eyes locked on Kurt’s lips. Kurt leans back, ready to pull his mouth away at the last minute and leave Sebastian to lay kisses across his neck. But Sebastian knows that ploy, so he starts at the juncture of Kurt’s neck and shoulder instead, traveling steadily up, up, up, in search of his husband’s mouth. Kurt tilts his head. His bangs fall into his face again, and a stray hair tickles his nose. He reaches between them and pushes his hair off his forehead.

A millimeter away from his husband’s lips, both men stop cold.

“Did I … just do what I think I did?” Kurt asks, his jaw hanging so low it almost scrapes the toe of his slippers.

“I’m afraid so,” Sebastian says, green eyes sympathetic with his twitching lips holding back a snicker.

“Dammit!”

“What should we do?” Sebastian asks, hoping that the answer will simply be _don’t worry about it. Continue on with their plans. Anything louse related will wash off in the shower while they’re making love._

“Grab that comb,” Kurt commands. “You’re going to learn how to de-louse.”

“Wouldn’t it just be easier to shave it all off?” Sebastian jokes, shaking the hair trimmer where Kurt can see. Kurt grabs it out of Sebastian’s hand and slams it down on the counter.

“If you _ever_ want to get head again,” Kurt says, unbuttoning his shirt, “you’ll de-louse mine. Now get to work!”

 

 


	31. The Christmas Gloomies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kurt just can’t seem to get into the holiday spirit. He doesn’t know why, he just isn’t feeling very Christmas-y.  
> But Sebastian knows someone who might be able to help.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the hummelholidays prompt Day 7 “family”.

“Hey, babe.” Sebastian takes off his coat and hangs it beside Kurt’s on the hooks by their front door. “How was your afternoon? Get any work done?”

“Tons,” Kurt answers dryly from his seat on the sofa, where his laptop, files, and other miscellaneous work items lie scattered beside him, creating a haphazard retaining wall that separates him from the rest of the room.

Sebastian walks in and marvels at how festive their family room looks – a vast difference from the stylish and modern day-to-day ambiance it had had that morning.

“You decorated!” Sebastian exclaims, walking towards the focal point of the room – their seven-and-a-half foot, fully lit, artificial California cedar. “And you put up the tree! _Finally_!”

“Yes, I did,” Kurt mutters, fully engrossed in the photo of a young woman modeling the latest in Tom Ford suits, part of his Spring collection. Sebastian watches his husband move from photo to photo, completely unaffected by the shiny red-and-green garland strung from wall to wall, or the colorful lights twinkling in time to the joyful music playing softly in the background.

“And … it didn’t help?”

“No.” Kurt sighs, setting the photos aside.

“Not an inch.”

“Not an inch.”

“Not even a _fraction_ of an inch?”

Kurt takes off his glasses, rubs his tired eyes. “Not at all.”

“That’s a shame.” Sebastian carefully relocates a pile of Kurt’s things and sits beside his husband. “I mean, it’s December 5th. The department stores have their window displays up, the Santa Claus court at the mall is in full swing, we’ve already been skating at the outdoor rink downtown - you’d think you’d feel a little bit Christmas-y by now.”

“I know.” Kurt scoots closer and puts his head on Sebastian’s shoulder. “I don’t understand it. Christmas is my favorite time of the year. It’s the one thing that’s always been able to cheer me up, even after my mom passed away. The whole year could be crap, but the minute Christmas rolled around, it made everything feel _right_ again. Hopeful. But now … I feel so _blue_.”

“Maybe you’re overloaded at work?” Sebastian guesses, seeing as Kurt has taken on several new responsibilities this year after earning his big promotion to Executive Fashion Editor at _Vogue_. “Could that be squashing some of your Christmas cheer?”

“I work in _fashion_ , Sebastian.” Kurt moves a hand away from his computer and onto his husband’s knee. “Next to the toy industry, it’s one of the most festive industries to work in this time of year.”

“Have you been missing your dad lately?”

“Well, _yeah_ ,” Kurt says, followed by a soft ‘ _Duh’_ that makes Sebastian chuckle. “But we Skype all the time. Plus, he and Carole are driving up in a few weeks. They’ll be staying with us through Christmas, so I don’t really think that’s it. I think I just have a case of the Christmas gloomies, you know?”

“Yeah.” Sebastian leans sideways and kisses Kurt on the crown of his head. “I know.”

“And I’m beginning to notice that the older I get, the worse it gets.” Kurt starts scratching the denim of Sebastian’s jeans, the sound of his nails raking against the fabric covering the wobble in his voice. “Maybe the magic of Christmas is wearing off for me. Maybe … maybe it’s only for children, and I should just accept it.”

“I don’t believe that,” Sebastian says, gently taking the hand carving ruts into his jeans, swiping his thumb over the smooth metal of his husband’s wedding band. “I think it’s the magic of Christmas that makes us feel like kids again, which is kind of important when you have kids of your own. You don’t want to be a Scrooge when you have a seven-year-old around, excited for Santa to show.”

“You’re right,” Kurt says. “I know.” He was thinking the exact same thing before Sebastian came home. “And I’m trying. I swear. But this year …” Kurt rolls his head back and forth “… I’m just not feeling it. And I don’t know how to change that.”

“You wanna go in the bedroom and fool around?” Sebastian asks, bouncing his eyebrows. “You know, I think I stumbled on that elf costume of yours from back in college. You could put it on and, you know, ask me what I want Santa to stuff in my stocking this year.”

Kurt scoffs. “I doubt it would still fit.”

“Nonsense,” Sebastian purrs. “In fact, I’ll bet you a cool thou that it’s even a bit too big on you.”

Kurt tilts his head to give his husband a look. “You’re really working hard to get me into bed, aren’t you?”

“Is it working?”

“Usually it would, but, for the moment, I don’t know if it would be a huge turn-on, or if I’d just feel like a giant perv.”

“Well, shit.”

“Sorry.”

“Meh. It was worth a shot.” Sebastian’s ears perk up at the sound of a vehicle stopping in front of their house. He glances at the clock on the mantel, checking the time, and smiles. “Though … I think someone just arrived who can help.”

“Yeah?” Kurt slips his glasses back on his nose, preparing to return to his work. “Only if they’re delivering a gallon bottle of tequila.”

“Oh, they’re delivering something a little bit better than that.”

Sebastian leaps off the sofa and rushes to the front door before whoever on the other side can ring the bell. He throws it open along with his arms in greeting to the person on the other side.

“Tom-Tom!”

“Daddy!”

Kurt’s head pops up at the sound of his son’s voice. He looks over at the clock. _2:30 already?_ he thinks. God! The day flew by, and he barely got anything done! Of course, he’d stopped for a few hours in the middle to get the place decorated. It had taken him longer than he’d anticipated. He had to pause periodically to catch his breath when an ornament or two caused a surge of melancholy to bubble to the surface, but it was just as important to finish as the work he’s currently behind on.

He remembers the Christmas his father forgot, when he was about Thomas’s age – the one right after his mom passed away. He remembers how abandoned he’d felt, how alone. His father remembered in time to save Christmas, and everything turned out alright in the end, but Kurt doesn’t want his little boy to go through that.

He might be depressed, but that didn’t mean their son should suffer.

“Papa, Papa, Papa!”

“Hey, Thomas!” Kurt says, ready to intercept his son, but with a yelp, Thomas flies right past him into the center of the room, straight to the tree.

“Oh! Oh my goodness! Oh my goodness! Daddy! You put up the tree!”

“Your _Papa_ put up the tree!” Sebastian says, redirecting credit where credit is due.

Thomas puts his hands up to his face and gasps, and Kurt’s heart squeezes, wondering if Thomas had noticed his recent moodiness with regard to the holidays. _Of course, he did!_ he scolds himself. _Kids his age notice everything!_

“Papa! It’s the most beautiful tree in the whole _universe_!”

“Thomas!” Kurt laughs. “It’s the same tree we had last year! And the year before that! It’s not even _decorated_ yet!”

“I don’t care! It’s _our_ tree and that’s all that matters!” He spins on the balls of his feet and flings himself into Kurt’s arms. “Thank you, Papa! Thank you! This is going to be the _best Christmas ever_!” Thomas hugs his father tighter, and Kurt hugs him back, holding him so close, Sebastian suspects it’ll take till next Christmas to untangle the two.

“Does that help?” he asks, rubbing circles onto Thomas’s back, wanting to be a part of this moment without taking his son’s attention away from Kurt.

Kurt rests his chin on Thomas’s small shoulder and sighs. “It doesn’t hurt.”

 

 

 

 


	32. Watching Christmas Burn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Kurt’s bad day, Sebastian comes up with a (slightly dangerous) way to make his husband feel better.
> 
> Until their son comes home. Then Kurt’s day goes from bad to worse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had written a version of this for Klaine, but I was originally writing this for the Hummel Holidays prompt "unexpected/bad luck". Anyway, I think this turned out cute, too.

“ _I want a hippopotamus for Christmas … Only a hippopotamus will do_ … Hey, babe!”

“Hey, Bas.”

 _Oh no_. Sebastian frowns when he hears Kurt’s reply. His husband, who had been a vibrating thread of excitement earlier that morning - singing Christmas carols, and bouncing from room to room, quadruple checking that everything looked _parfait_ \- has gone monotone.

Sebastian hangs up his coat and heads to the living room. It’s a hop, skip, and a jump from the front door into the main family room, but with the massive amount of holiday decorations they’d put up this year, Kurt is a little difficult to see at first glance. But as he approaches, Sebastian finds his husband - slouching on the sofa, still dressed in his brand new Alexander McQueen suit. He’d loosened his tie, unbuttoned a few buttons, and kicked his shoes across the room. There they lay, overturned in front of the fireplace, too close to the heat to be good for the leather.

If Kurt is letting the finish on his shoes get ruined and one of his favorite suits wrinkle, his day can’t have been good.

“Uh … how was the photoshoot?”

“I need a drink,” Kurt grumbles, waving his fingers at his husband, signaling Sebastian to get him one.

“It’s only two in the afternoon!” Sebastian kicks off his own shoes and takes a seat on the floor beside his husband’s left leg so he can rub his foot.

“ _And_?”

“ _And_ you don’t drink.”

“It’s never too late to start.”

Sebastian focuses his knuckles on Kurt’s arch, knowing that’s the spot to hit when Kurt’s in a sour mood. “That bad, huh?”

“ _That_ _bad_?” Kurt laughs dryly. “You might say that. Look at the tree.”

Sebastian gazes at their Christmas tree, overflowing with an eclectic collection of expensive heirloom ornaments and handmade creations by their son, and sighs. “It’s a _beautiful_ tree.”

“It is, isn’t it? But did you know it’s uneven?”

“It is not!” Sebastian tilts his head from side to side, trying to see it. He can’t. It must be one of those miniscule things that only photographers notice, like the fact that Kurt’s right earlobe is supposedly longer than his left.

“Well, not the tree so much” - Kurt scoots closer to his husband - “but the presents underneath it. Apparently it was _bereft of presents_.”

“But we _have_ presents.”

“Not _enough_ presents …” Kurt moans when Sebastian hits just the right spot. “Apparently, in order for me to be convincing in my role as Executive Fashion Editor at _Vogue_ and earn my right to be featured in the center spread for Christmas, our tree needed more presents. Extravagance is the key. _Excess_.”

“Excess has never been a problem for me, babe. You should have hit me up. I would have had Bergdorf’s delivered.” Sebastian does a double-take of their tree, at the stacks of presents that weren’t there when he’d left gathered anew around the base. “I was wondering where the avalanche of gifts came from. I thought maybe you’d gotten motivated.”

“They’re not ours. They’re empty boxes,” Kurt mutters, sinking into the couch cushions. “They’re there to make our tree look _fuller_.”

“I feel sorry for the poor prop guy who got stuck wrapping all those.” Sebastian snickers … until he feels his husband’s knee knock him in the ear. He looks up at Kurt glaring back at him, and his final snicker shrivels into nothingness. “I take it by the bony joint digging into my temple that _you_ wrapped them?”

“A-ha.”

“How many?”

“Roughly five dozen.”

“Oh, babe!” Sebastian sympathizes, but he’s still laughing – mostly at the image of a put-off Kurt in his expensive suit, sitting on the floor and cursing under his breath while he wrapped sixty Goddamned gift boxes. “Don’t they pay some schlub good money to do that kind of stuff?”

“Yeah, well, supposedly his wife went into labor,” Kurt groans, his head falling back as he pinches his eyes shut, “so he had to leave early … the jerk.”

“That _bastard_!” Sebastian is one hundred percent behind his husband … though, in reality, they probably can’t blame the man for rushing off to be with his wife when she gives birth to their baby. But there had to be _someone_ else they could call in to do the grunt work. Isn’t that what interns are for? Speaking of … “Nice to see they left you to clean up the mess.” Sebastian scoffs, looking at the number of boxes underneath their tree. “We’re going to have to deal with these before the peanut comes home. We don’t want him getting the wrong impression about the size of his haul.”

“You know, all I’ve wanted to do since the crew left is set one of those little motherfuckers on fire with my mind.” Kurt squints hard at the box closest, checking one more time that he can’t. “Could you imagine how satisfying it would be to hear the paper crackle … see the sparks fly as it burns …?”

Sebastian considers that. Even though he himself has never wanted to throw a wrapped present into a fireplace, other things come to mind: Calculus textbooks, his high school uniform, a few ex-boyfriends. He understands wanting the satisfaction of watching something you loathe devoured, consumed out of existence, slowly and painfully (maybe from the crotch out). A pop from the fireplace draws his attention there, to the fire Kurt had lit for ambiance, its single log still burning, breaking down in its cradle. He knows that burning a present in their fireplace probably isn’t the smartest thing to do, especially wrapped in metallic paper, but _smart_ hasn’t necessarily been a pre-requisite for a lot of the things Sebastian has done.

Besides, if it makes Kurt feel better, then where’s the harm in disposing of _one_?

He gets up from the floor. Kurt whimpers as he leaves, raising his foot to remind Sebastian what he was doing and that it was _important_. But when Kurt opens his eyes, he sees Sebastian by the tree, juggling one of the smaller fake presents in his hands. “Why don’t you chuck one in the fireplace then?”

Kurt sputters a laugh, but his brow draws together when Sebastian stays put, tossing the package up in the air and catching it.

“Are you … are you _serious_?”

“Why not? I mean, it’s not going to be as fun as lighting it _Firestarter_ style, but you’ll still get to see it burn.”

Kurt rises from the sofa. Without fixing his suit, he walks towards his husband.

“Come on.” Sebastian hands the present over. “It’ll be _great_ for stress relief.”

“What about sex?”

“We can do that afterward.” Sebastian winks, grabbing a healthy handful of Kurt’s left ass cheek. “But for now, let’s set some presents on fire!”

“I … I can’t,” Kurt says, but takes the present out of Sebastian’s hands with a quickness that makes him laugh. “It’s just … it’s _crazy_!”

“It’s crazy that you had to wrap them in the first place! And for your own _Life and Style_ shoot, too. Your a-hole boss should be ashamed!”

“Shhh!” Kurt slaps a hand over his husband’s mouth. “Anna Wintour has eyes and ears everywhere! I wouldn’t be surprised if one of these presents is _bugged_!”

“Uh … creepy. All the more reason to burn them then, in my opinion.”

Sebastian watches Kurt contemplate the gift in his hands, taking longer than he’d anticipated – long enough to start re-thinking himself. So he comes up with a solution to move this party along. “Well, if _you’re_ not, then I’m sure as hell going to.”

He reaches for the box. With an angry flash of Kurt’s blue eyes, Kurt tosses the empty box over the safety grate and into the fireplace. Sebastian and Kurt watch as the fire engulfs the package, immediately eating away at the wrapping paper. Black holes form, their edges curling back, the entire thing throwing off a sprinkle of gold and silver. They watch the box burn until the paper is gone, the remaining cardboard innards collapsing into ashes.

“God!” Kurt moans so deeply it sounds sexual. “That felt better than I thought it would!”

“See?” Sebastian licks his lips, ready to attack Kurt’s neck after that. “I told you this was a good idea.” _Especially if Kurt makes that noise because of it._

Kurt reaches past Sebastian and grabs a handful of presents. He shakes them to make sure they’re empty, and then tosses them into the fire. For a moment, the boxes overwhelm the flames, and Sebastian thinks that Kurt may have snuffed them out – the power of the presents and their sparkly wrapping too strong. But with an impressive _whoosh!_ the stack lights on fire. Even before those boxes are properly singed, Kurt grabs more.

“I don’t think we can burn them all!” Sebastian laughs. “Our fireplace isn’t big enough!”

“That’s okay,” Kurt says, chucking one more in for good measure. “I’ll hide them behind the real presents. Then every time Thomas misbehaves, I’ll pick one up and toss it in as a warning!”

“That’s awful!” Sebastian laughs. “Even _I’m_ not that mean!”

Kurt raises a skeptical brow, but he refrains from commenting. “I’m just kidding! I’d never do that! In fact, we should probably stop now. Thomas is going to be home any min---”

“Daddy! Papa, I’m … _aaahhhh_!”

Kurt and Sebastian, huddled close together and laughing into one another’s shoulders, stop with a choke as the bloodcurdling scream of their only son fills the room. They turn and stare at the little boy stopped short before them with his loyal dog by his side, both mentally preparing with breakneck speed to field the questions and accusations that Thomas is sure to lob at them.

“Tom-Tom …” Sebastian starts first, seeing as – in his pressed dress shirt and slacks - he’s the parent who doesn’t look like a desperate madman, as opposed to Kurt, who looks like he spent the afternoon sleeping on the sidewalk in a $2,000 designer suit.

“Wha---wha---?” Thomas pants, his eyes darting from Kurt, standing beside the fireplace with two presents in his hands; to Sebastian, in the process of handing over one more; to the fireplace, flames climbing higher as the charred skeletons of other gifts burn to a crisp.

“Thomas” - Kurt puts the empty boxes carefully back on the pile and raises his hands in surrender - “it’s not what you think.”

“Daddy? Papa? I … _ah_!” And with that, Thomas faints, positioning himself beside his dog Hepburn first, then dropping on top of the Labradoodle gently with a hand thrown over his forehead. Kurt and Sebastian look at their little boy, probably honestly devastated over the loss of what he thinks is a genuine present … but so obviously faking.

Sebastian looks at Kurt.

Kurt looks at Sebastian.

Sebastian points at the heap of overdramatic child lying atop his dog, and says, “Okay, now, that’s _your_ son.”

 


	33. Quite the Stir

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Friday night family dinner goes humorously awry when a series of unfortunate circumstances turns the Hummel-Smythe family meal from gourmet to gruesome.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote a similar piece for Klaine, and even though the bare bones premise of the story is the same, there is a very different dynamic at play, and a very different reason for Kurt's angst.

“How does this look, Kurt?” Sebastian asks, standing puffed up and proud in front of the concoction he’s been helping his husband create.

Kurt peeks over Sebastian’s shoulder and into the pot on the stove, assessing his progress. He checks it against his iPhone screen, and the gif playing of the meal that they’re making. The two look identical. Kurt gives him a pat on the shoulder, then one to their adorable son beaming beside his father, mimicking his pose of pride.

“Looks good, everybody! It looks, dare I say, _scrumptious_?”

“Yes! We’ve reached ‘s’ word status! High-five!” Sebastian wipes a hand on the apron wrapped around his waist, then raises it so his son can give him a high-five - which Thomas does, hopping down from his stool so he can leap into the air and smack his dad’s hand with all his tiny might.

“Ouch!” Sebastian teases, shaking out his hand. “Careful there, kiddo! I’m gonna need that hand later.” Sebastian glances over at his husband and gives him a wink. Kurt rolls his eyes.

“Only if you’re good,” Kurt replies with sarcastic sweetness. Thomas snickers, completely out of the loop but instinctively knowing his Daddy said something that got him into trouble.

“Okay, Papa!” he pipes in, eager to join the part of the conversation he _does_ understand. “What do we do next?”

“Next” - Kurt scrolls down the page and continues reading the recipe - “fold in three egg whites and one egg yolk _separately_ , careful to incorporate each one fully before adding the next.”

“Got it.” Sebastian holds out a hand to Thomas, gesturing for the eggs. Thomas hands them over one at a time, slapping each one perilously into his father’s hand.

“I’m glad we got the ‘s’ word,” Thomas says, causing his fathers to choke on their laughter, “but is it _supposed_ to smell like puke?” Thomas peeks dubiously into the pot, a frown curving his small lips.

“Considering the amount of parmesan cheese we put in this sauce, I’d say that _yes_ is a safe bet.” Sebastian deftly rescues the last two eggs before they crack in his hand. “But look on the bright side - it probably doesn’t _taste_ like puke.”

Thomas looks at his fathers, then back into the pot, taking another skeptical sniff. “Are you _sure_ we can’t just go to Chuck E. Cheese for dinner tonight _?”_

“We can go to the Rat Pizza Palace when it’s _not_ family dinner night,” Kurt declares. “Friday night dinners are a _tradition_. Tonight is our one night for togetherness, reconnecting with each another, and a family cooked meal.”

“But we eat dinner together _every_ night!” Thomas giggles.

“Yeah, well, who knows what might happen a few years from now,” Kurt mutters, feigning fiddling with his phone so that he doesn’t have to see the concerned faces of his husband and son.

So he doesn’t’ have to explain why he’s been in such a mood lately.

He could blame it on the holidays. A lot of people get blue in December. But that’s not it – not entirely.

In their family, Kurt is considered the strict parent. The disciplinarian. In reality, he’s not. He has maybe five hard and fast rules, but everything else is pretty much negotiable – especially considering the fact that if someone in their house is going to break a rule, it’ll be _Sebastian_ , not Thomas. But this rule – _this_ one is too important. Being together as a family, sharing a meal, talking about their week, was the cornerstone of his and his father’s relationship after his mother died. No matter what went on in their lives, no matter how many late night rehearsals or overtime at his dad’s shop took them away from one another, they always had Friday.

It was sacred.

There was a time during high school when Kurt took Friday night dinners for granted and ducked out. Not too long after, his father had a heart attack. Kurt regretted those missing Fridays for the rest of his life. Thank God his dad recovered, because if Kurt had squandered that time and didn’t get a second chance to …

Anyway, that didn’t happen. But it could have. And it’s because of that that he made the decision when they adopted Thomas that Friday night dinners would be sacred again.

He usually doesn’t think too hard about it; it’s simply part of their schedule. Yes, they eat dinner together _every_ night, but Friday night is “family dinner night”.

No, it didn’t strike him as redundant at all.

But it hit him out of nowhere this year, because _this_ year Thomas turned eight – the same age Kurt was when his mother passed away. And since then, he’s spent way too much time reflecting on what his life was like after that day … what Thomas’s life might be like if he lost Sebastian or himself. He’s already lost his own mother. Thomas doesn’t mention her much anymore, doesn’t have the nightmares he used to have when he first moved in, but Kurt knows he still thinks about her.

And Kurt knows how that feels.

Family dinner night won’t really make an impact until Thomas reaches high school, possibly junior high, so maybe Kurt _is_ taking this Friday night home-cooked dinner thing a little too far. But he doesn’t want to make the wrong decision and regret it later. The older Thomas gets, the more he foresees that happening. All he can do is find a happy medium between his heart and his head, and hope for the best.

“What’s wrong with Papa?” Thomas whispers to Sebastian after several minutes of silence.

“Oh, don’t worry about him, Tom-Tom.” Sebastian smiles sympathetically at his husband. “He’s just feeling a little low.”

“Oh.” Thomas looks at his Papa struggling with his phone, distracted by his attempt at appearing okay. “Is there any way we can help him?”

Sebastian sighs. That’s a good question. He’s been trying to help Kurt for days. He’s no closer to an answer tonight than he was a few days ago. “How about we finish making dinner and go from there? Maybe we can go out and get a cheesecake for dessert. That might cheer him up.”

“Gotcha!” Thomas gives his Daddy a thumbs up. “What’s next, Papa?”

Kurt sniffles, looking at his phone with his back purposefully turned. “While slowly raising the heat, stir vigorously to get your sauce to thicken.”

“What constitutes _vigorously_?” Sebastian asks.

Kurt shrugs. “I don’t know. Just stir it fast. It needs to thicken, right?”

Sebastian lifts the spoon from the pot and watches the sauce drip. “Yup. It’s about the consistency of water right now so the thicker the better, I say. Right, Tom-Tom?”

“Right!”

“Maybe we should use the hand mixer. Or something else with a motor.”

“Like my remote control car?”

“Or _my_ car!” Sebastian suggests, imagining the chaos that would ensue if they hooked up his Porsche engine to their hand mixer and let her rip.

“Yeah!” Thomas cheers, hands raised above his head. “That would be awe--- um … Daddy?”

“Yeah, kiddo?”

“Is the sauce _supposed_ to be doing that?”

“Wha---?” Sebastian looks at the sauce he’s been stirring non-stop and sees not a thick, creamy sauce, but a frothy foam expanding with each turn of his spoon, rising steadily to the top of the pot. Sebastian is reluctant to stop stirring but not sure he should continue. “Uh … Kurt? Can you read what comes next, please?”

Kurt looks over from the salad he’s been throwing together to the recipe on his phone. “Don’t stir too vigorously, or that may cause your sauce to thicken too quickly and rise.”

“Uh …” Sebastian and Thomas share a look. Thomas hops off his stool and takes a cautious step away, dragging his service dog, who’s been watching them silently this whole time from the foot of Thomas’s stool, with him. “I think it’s thickening too quickly! And rising!”

Kurt turns to look, startled by the foaming head rushing to the top of the pot. “Jesus!”

“What do we do!?” Sebastian asks.

“Stop stirring!”

“Won’t it burn!?”

“Turn off the heat!”

Sebastian moves the pot to a cold burner and switches off the flame. Dad, dad, son, and dog gather around the stove, watching the pot, waiting for the sauce to settle. But their dinner suddenly takes on a life of its own, burbling and bubbling, overflowing at an alarming rate.

“That didn’t help!”

“It’s getting all over!”

“Lay the spoon across the top!”

“That only works for pasta!”

“Put the pot in the sink!”

Sebastian runs the pot to the sink. The contents slurp over the sides, leaving a trail of white spots on the floor, each one doubling in size after it lands. “It’s not stopping!”

“It has to eventually! There’s only so much sauce in there!”

“It doesn’t seem like it!”

“What now!”

“Dinner’s ruined!”

“I don’t think that’ll matter if it drowns us first!”

“God, I’m hungry,” Thomas mumbles.

Kurt looks at the mess that was their dinner and sighs. They followed all the directions exactly. Up until the point his screen froze and he took a moment to make a salad, everything was going fine.

Except it had stopped _going fine_ because Kurt had gotten lost in his thoughts, completely consumed by the past and a future that has yet to happen.

That probably will never happen.

He and Sebastian are strong, healthy men, and barring anything out of their control, they both intend on being around for their son for an awfully long time.

He had gotten bummed and, in turn, he’d made his favorite people on earth bummed. And now, dinner’s ruined.

He looks at the pot spewing its contents onto the counter. No … the _food_ is ruined. Dinner is what they make of it, and wherever they eat it, all that matters is that they’re together.

He can’t live in the valley of _what if’s_ forever. It’s a good thing to plan as if he’s going to live forever, but there are some days he should live as if he might die tomorrow.

And, unfortunately for parents, that sometimes means leaving a gourmet, nutritionally balanced meal behind to eat subpar, greasy pizza promoted by a giant Rat.

“Run!” he says.

“Run where?” Sebastian asks. Thomas doesn’t need to be told twice, heading for the door to grab his jacket.

“Where is Chuck E. Cheese again?” Kurt asks, internalizing a groan because, as much as he loves his son, it’s _still_ Chuck E. Cheese – a cardboard crust, tomato sauce out of a can, and cheese whose authenticity he can’t vouch for.

His stomach objects just thinking about it.

“Yes!” Thomas cheers because kids’ taste buds are underdeveloped, and their stomachs are lined with lead.

“What about the mess!?” Sebastian asks, not actually worried about the possible destruction of their kitchen because _duh_! He can just hand Kurt his AmEx card and let him re-decorate.

Who knows? A little retail therapy might put him on the road to recovery.

“It looks like Hepburn has that handled!” Thomas laughs, watching his service dog lick up the drops left along the floor.

“Ugh! That can’t be good for his digestion.” Kurt reaches for a dish towel to wipe away the final few before Hepburn can get to them, but the animal is attacking them at a phenomenal rate. He’ll just have to hope the poor dog doesn’t vomit in Sebastian’s Porsche on the way to the restaurant. “Oh, nuts! Just grab him and go!”

 


	34. That Guy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Sebastian stumbles upon his old Dalton Academy athletic uniform, he's thrilled to find out that it still fits ...
> 
> ... though when and where he should wear it are still up for discussion.

“Hey! Hey, Kurt! Look at what I found!”

Kurt puts his magazine down to look at his husband. “What is it---good _heavens_! Where the heck did you find _that_ old thing?” He sizes his husband up and down, dressed in his old Dalton Academy lacrosse warm-up outfit – a grey t-shirt with the words _Dalton Academy_ silk screened across the front in blue, and a pair of matching blue running shorts with red piping down the sides. To be completely honest, Sebastian looks hot as hell in his retro school clothes, but he’s older now. He’s filled out a little more …

… and it shows.

Which is why Kurt’s eyes zoom straight to his shorts. They’ve seen better days, that’s for sure – the color faded, the waistband worn, the words  _Dalton Academy_ printed above the thigh cracked from repeated washing. They _do_ fit – technically.

But not for wearing outside of the bedroom.

“They were up in the attic in a box marked _high school crap_. I thought it was yours, so I went rifling through it ...”

“Of course, you did,” Kurt says, rolling his eyes.

“… but, nope. It was mine. In retrospect, the word _crap_ should have been a dead giveaway.”

“Probably,” Kurt mutters, returning to his magazine.

“There’s a ton of junk in there that I’m planning on pitching,” Sebastian continues, “except for this. _This_ is going to be my new running outfit.”

And with that, Kurt chokes on his tongue.

“Uh … Sebastian, sweetie, I know you must be proud that you can still fit into your clothes from high school, but if you wear those shorts outside, you’re going to be  _that guy_.”

“And which guy is that? The handsome guy?” Sebastian strikes a pose with his hands on his hips, his chin and nose in the air. “The uber-fit guy?” He turns to his husband, raises both arms, and flexes. “The guy so dedicated to his workout regimen he can still wear clothes from over a decade ago?” He lifts the hem of his shirt to show off his six-pack, which gives Kurt a better view of his front. Kurt snorts.

How Sebastian plans to go jogging commando without rubbing his junk raw, Kurt has no idea.

“No. You’re going to be  _that guy_ ,” Kurt says. “As in ‘ _Kids, see that guy over there? That’s the kind of guy mommy’s been warning you about. Stay away from him_ ’.”

“You’re being overdramatic.” Sebastian shifts his weight from one foot to the other, then subconsciously adjusts his crotch. “I’m planning on giving them a trial run at the park this afternoon.”

“What!?”

“I’ll have Thomas and Hepburn with me. No one will think I’m some sick-o.”

“On the contrary. They’ll probably think you used your dog to lure your first victim into the woods and call the cops on you.”

“We’re going to the park down by his _school_. Everyone we know is going to be there.”

“Oh, God.” Kurt drops his head back and hides his face with his magazine. “That’s going to make it worse! We’ll never be able to show our faces again! Don’t do it, Sebastian! He loves his school so much! It’s going to cost so much money …”

“Money?” Sebastian crosses his arms indignantly over his chest, pulling the front of the shirt so tight, the words _Dalton Academy_ start to spread. “For what?”

“To change our identities and move to a different state.”

“Now you’re being ridiculous … and _mean_.” Sebastian pouts, so unlike him it actually tugs at Kurt’s heart.

“Oh, honey …” Kurt puts his magazine down and stands, looping his arms around his husband’s shoulders. “Let’s put it this way – you know how you told me that running through the park sometimes turns you on because it reminds you of that time you and I …?”

Kurt doesn’t finish, but he doesn’t have to. Sebastian starts grinning like an idiot, even with the ending omitted. “Yeah, I remember.”

“I want you to take a moment to think about that afternoon. Picture it in your head as clearly as you can … in  _detail_.”

“Okay …” Sebastian looks up to the ceiling and visualizes. The afternoon had started out warm and sunny, but it had gotten overcast the second they spread their blanket. But Kurt and Sebastian were stubborn. That picnic was one of their first outings as official newlyweds, and they were going to be damned if a few dark clouds forced them to leave. Eventually, the grey skies turned into drizzle, and the drizzle turned into rain. While other people packed up their things and left, Kurt and Sebastian hunkered down beneath their blanket to finish their carefully crafted lunch. They sat practically on top of one another to keep warm, abandoning their canapes to the elements when they couldn’t eat and shield themselves at the same time.

Closer and closer and closer they crept until they basically occupied the same space … with Kurt’s head in Sebastian’s lap, and Sebastian’s dick in Kurt’s mouth.

Sebastian grins. The more he thinks about that afternoon, the tighter his shorts get, which he manages to ignore … until he hears Kurt snicker – a total buzz kill. As soon as Sebastian’s brain returns from its south-of-the-border vacay, he feels restricted, the back seam of his shorts climbing into his ass crack, the front tented as his erection fights to break free of the thin, polyester fabric. He reaches down to feel for himself, and his eyes go wide.

“Dude!” He looks down to survey the damage, but instead of being embarrassed, his grin grows full force. “ _Nice_.”

“Yes, it is nice,” Kurt agrees, “but not for out in public. Agreed?”

“Agreed. But …”

“But …?” Kurt raises an intrigued brow.

“We’re not in public right now … are we?” Sebastian rolls Kurt in his arms.

“No” - Kurt steps an inch to the side to avoid bending anything important - “but what about your playdate at the park with Thomas?”

“It can wait. I think this would be the perfect opportunity for a little roleplay. You could be the strict P.E. teacher, and I’ll be myself – snarky but boyishly charming.” He tries to entice his husband with kisses down his neck. “We can pretend we’re back in the hallowed halls of Dalton Academy ...”

“You know,” Kurt says, memories of their Dalton days dulling his own chances of getting an erection, “back at Dalton, you were kind of a …”

“Jerk?”

“I was going to say asshole” – Kurt averts his eyes sheepishly – “but whatever works.”

Sebastian’s mouth hovers over Kurt’s lips, swallowing the last, bitter fragments of shame and regret, prepared to make it all up to him. “Well, then, here’s your chance to exact some revenge, right? You know you want to. Whaddya say?”

Kurt looks into his husband’s eyes, a few, thin lines cropping up around the edges that weren’t there a decade ago, but still as devilish as they ever were. The only real difference is these eyes look at him with mischief _and_ with _love_.

And Kurt loves him back.

“Sebastian Smythe,” Kurt scolds in a whisper so their son won’t hear, “if you don’t get your butt in that bedroom and give me thirty push-ups, you’ll be suspended _indefinitely_!”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Hummel, sir.” Sebastian turns nonchalantly on his heel, the same way he did in high school, and jogs to their bedroom, and Kurt curses the fact that they stayed enemies for so long.

Sebastian _does_ look hot in that uniform. The after lacrosse practice sex under the bleachers must have been epic.

Kurt bites his lower lip, following after his husband, his ass practically bursting from those teeny, tiny shorts.

There’s only one way to find out …

… but after, he’s going to jump online and do some shopping – find a similar outfit at the Dalton Academy alumni store in Sebastian’s size so he’s not tempted to take this one out for a spin.

 


	35. Backseat Retreat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Kurt wakes up and finds his husband gone, he goes searching the house for him ... and finds him in the last place he'd ever think to find him ...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This continues the theme of Kurt being gloomy over Christmas.

“Oh … oh, Kurt …”

“Sebastian?”

“Oh, yes, baby … j-just … just like that … oh G-God …”

“Se---Sebastian?” Kurt yawns, winding trembling arms around his torso as he steps into the cold, dimly lit garage. “Sebastian, are you in here--- _oh_.”

Yup. Sebastian is there, all right, in literally the last place in the house Kurt had thought to look.

And, from what Kurt can see through the fogged windows, he may be partially naked.

Kurt had decided to check on a whim to see if either his husband’s SUV or his Mustang were still there. It’s not uncommon, if Sebastian can’t sleep, for him to take a run to the gym. They have a membership at a 24-hour spot not too far from their home. But Kurt didn’t dream that his husband would be sitting in the backseat of his Mustang, parked in the garage, doing what he’s doing.

But, unlike his high school days, Kurt isn’t scandalized to find his husband masturbating in the back of his sports car. He doesn’t sneak back into the house and pretend he doesn’t see. Sebastian is his _husband_. They have no secrets, and besides, it’s not like Sebastian is going to be embarrassed when he finds out.

Modesty was never one of his stronger suits.

Kurt walks up to the rear door and opens it without knocking. The cold outside rushes in, pushing the intense heat out and _God_ , does it feel good against Kurt’s tense and tired body.

Almost good enough to lure Kurt in.

Sebastian, eyes squeezed shut and head thrown back, stops what he’s doing. He slumps down in his seat with a heavy sigh, shivering as the temperature around him drops.

“Hey, babe,” he pants, breathing clouds of heat into the rapidly cooling air.

“Hey. Testing out your shocks?”

“You can say that.” Sebastian chuckles. “Can’t sleep?”

Kurt shrugs. “Yes and no. It got harder after you left.”

“Yeah?” Sebastian smiles, giving his dick a gratuitous stroke. “I wish I could say I was having the same problem.”

Kurt glances down at his husband’s hand caressing his erection. The man is hard, flushed red, obviously aroused, but Kurt knows his husband. He’s nowhere near an orgasm. Even with all the moaning he was doing, his car rocking back and forth like it was preparing to take flight, it didn’t sound like his heart was too into it.

“We’ve got a guest room for that, you know,” Kurt teases. “Or the bathroom.”

“Uh, kinky much? Your dad and your stepmom are currently asleep in our guest room.”

“Oh, yeah.” Kurt laughs and yawns at the same time. “I forgot.”

“Besides, you’re seriously underestimating the hot factor of a good backseat make-out.”

“Well, I had a bad experience in one once-upon-a-time, if you remember.”

“Oh. Yeah. I forgot.” Sebastian gulps, his erection withering an inch at the memory of the story Kurt had told him back before they’d started dating, when Sebastian was still a little envious of Kurt over having tapped Blaine.

The story of what happened in the _Scandals_ parking lot after he and Blaine left.

“At least you were moaning my name,” Kurt adds, attempting to erase that memory from both their heads.

“Always.” Sebastian winks. “Are you mad?”

“No. Because I have a pretty good idea _why_ you’re here.”

Sebastian stares down at the hard-on that, regardless of his lackluster performance, doesn’t want to die. But that’s probably because Kurt is standing there. “I came out here because I didn’t want to risk waking you. I didn’t want you to think I was trying to pressure you or anything.”

“And I’m grateful for that. I really am.” Kurt leans against the door frame, too tired to stand but at odds with climbing in beside his husband for fear he might pass out the second his butt hits the seat. “I’m sorry if I’ve been unavailable. Like I said before, I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m just so damned _blue_.”

“That’s okay, babe.” Sebastian tucks himself away (which helps only barely because he’s tenting his pants in a manner so obscene, it’s laughable), and scoots down the seat to get closer to Kurt. Kurt tries to maintain a serious demeanor because he feels the conversation warrants it, but he can’t help snickering as he watches his husband’s dick bob with each move. “Take your time. I’ll give you all the time you need.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really. Sheesh! I _have_ changed, you know, in the however many decades we’ve been together.”

But some things _haven’t_ changed, and thank God for that - namely how head-over-heels the two of them are for one another. How they know each other so well.

Kurt looks at his husband – at his sincere expression; his bright, green eyes, filled with worry; his hands gripping his knees, torn between staying where they are and taking his husband’s hand, probably kissing it to offer comfort …

… all slightly tainted by the erection that refuses to be ignored.

Yes. Some things never change.

It’s been a long week. Between Kurt’s case of the holiday blahs, his dad and Carole driving up earlier than normal, and all the Christmas hubbub down at Thomas’s school that they volunteered to help with, they haven’t had an intimate moment alone.

But here and now, in their garage at two in the morning, when the possibility that someone might walk in and interrupt them is next to nil, and Kurt can feel himself smiling – _genuinely_ smiling – for the first time in days, might be a good time to give it some attention.

“Whaddya say we go back inside?” Sebastian suggests. “We’ll cuddle under the blankets, get some sleep, and then tomorrow we can ask your folks to watch the munchkin so we can go out on a date.”

“That _does_ sound nice, but since I’m here, and since I don’t think I’m going back to sleep anytime soon ( _which is an eggshell-colored lie because he’s about dead on his feet_ ) would it be alright if I joined you? Maybe … went for a ride?” Kurt bounces his eyebrows, and Sebastian smirks, happy to see a bit of his old husband peeking through the veil of sadness that’s been his constant companion since the holidays began.

“Like … to the store?” Sebastian kids. “Because I think Vons is open 24 hours.”

“That’s not quite what I had in mind,” Kurt admits, climbing carefully into his husband’s lap.

“Oh, well, if _this_ is what you had in mind, then _absolutely_ ,” Sebastian moans when Kurt rubs up against him, his entire body shuddering as a previously non-existent orgasm rises from the depths of his groin. He reaches out to shut and lock the car door, praying that he lasts long enough to make this good for him. “Why don’t we see if we can give my shocks a run for their money?”

 


End file.
